Effects of Ethical Leadership on Employee Attitudes with Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction

Abstract

In a competitive environment the workforce of an organization is one the most critical determinants and significant cause that add and contribute to its success. This study focuses on studying the employee attitudes in the universities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The education sector being a pure service industry makes this study even more meaningful as employee behavior matters the most in a service industry. Our first variable is Ethical Leadership, which is a type of leadership in which the leader adopts a conduct that is good for everyone and is accepted by and appropriate in every sphere of their personal and professional life. It comprises of three major elements: ethical leaders serves as an example for his followers, he is a good communicator and he emphasizes on the importance of ethics. There are many types of leaderships like Charismatic leadership, Visionary leadership, Coaching Leadership, facilitative leadership etc. But this study focuses on Ethical Leadership as we have observed the growing need for guidance for employees in higher education industry on ethical basis to satisfy their attitudinal needs to ensure the smooth delivery of their core item i.e. Education. Universal values that are considered to be moral are the main component of the process of Ethical Leadership and this ultimately leads to the development of the dynamism in the individual’s personality (Brown, Treviño & Harrison, 2005; Avey, Polanski & Walumbwa, 2011). However Unethical behaviors, for instance verbal abuses, misuse of organization’s time, blaming others, favoritism and extra publicizing of specific ethical leadership failures are well-known among the important personnel of the organizations. So organizations needs to be aware of such short comings of unethical behaviors and focuses to promote a culture of ethical norms (Sarwar, Ishaq, Amin, & Ahmed, 2020). According to Resnick, Hangs, Dickson & Michelson (2006) there are 6 fundamental characteristics of a leadership that is said to be ethical, which are as follows; ethical awareness, community/individual-orientation, possession of a solid character and integrity, encouraging and empowering, motivating, and managing ethical accountability.