Exploring the Impact of Ethical Leadership on Employees' Organizational Commitment through the Mediating Role of Altruistic Motives

Applying an ethical leadership style yields positive results for organizations. Ethical leadership is related to increasing organizational commitment and altruistic motives in organizations; using an ethical leadership style by the manager and benefiting from the moral environment can bring favorable results for employees and produce an acceptable result in organizational commitment and altruistic motives. Ethical leadership is known as one of the most important factors in the organizational environment that can have a significant impact on the behavior and performance of employees. This type of leadership influences more on employees’ commitment through ethical values and principles, transparency, and fairness. Considering that using this style in any organization can have positive results, this study investigated the impacts of ethical leadership on employees' organizational commitment, considering the mediating role of altruistic motives. Data collection tools included three standard questionnaires on ethical leadership developed by Brown, Trevino, and Harrison (2005), organizational citizenship behavior developed by Padsakoff (2000), and organizational commitment developed by Allen and Meier (1991). At first, the variables of ethical leadership, organizational commitment, and altruistic motives were explained. Then, their dimensions were explored using exploratory factor analysis, and finally using confirmatory factor analysis and by AMOS and SPSS22, the proposed hypotheses were examined. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between the research variables, and all research hypotheses were confirmed. The results showed that ethical leadership significantly affects the organizational commitment and altruistic motives of employees of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. Moreover, altruistic motives have a significant impact on the organizational commitment of the employees, and ethical leadership has a significant impact on their commitment through the mediating role of altruistic motives.