How transformational and ethical leadership promote organizational citizenship behavior: the roles of change-related self-efficacy and leader-member exchange

Purpose The relationship between leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is complex. Based on social exchange and social learning theories, the purpose of this paper is to investigate transformational and ethical leadership as antecedents to team members' OCB, hypothesizing the moderating role of change-related self-efficacy and the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX). Design/methodology/approach Based on theories and previous literature, we built a research model with moderated mediating hypotheses. We examined those hypotheses using statistical methods on survey data from 450 employees in 50 organizations. To avoid common method bias, data were collected at different times following Bauer et al . (2006) and Ilyas et al . (2020) and then analyzed using Mplus, version 8.1. Findings Study findings suggest that transformational leadership and ethical leadership are positively associated with OCB. Those positive relationships were mediated by LMX and that employee’s change-related self-efficacy had a moderating effect on the relationships between transformational leadership and OCB and ethical leadership and OCB, which were mediated by LMX. Practical implications We found that change-related self-efficacy and LMX play a moderated mediating mechanism in the effect of transformational and ethical leadership on OCB. Leadership in practice should promote employees' change-related self-efficacy in order to foster OCB among employees. Social implications Our findings suggest that effective leadership and enhanced self-efficacy can lead to broader societal benefits by improving organizational performance and employee well-being. Organizations with strong OCBs tend to have better team dynamics and higher productivity, which can contribute positively to society by fostering environments that support personal growth and community engagement. Originality/value The originality is examining the moderated mediating relationships among transformational leadership, ethical leadership, followers’ change-related self-efficacy, LMX and OCB. Specifically, we created value by making contributions to examine how and when transformational leadership and ethical leadership promote employee OCB, exploring the underlying mechanisms of transformational leadership and ethical leadership in promoting team members’ LMX and OCB and the extent to which the relationship is moderated by employees’ change-related self-efficacy.