How Does Ethical Leadership Impact Employee Organizational Citizenship Behavior?

Abstract. This study investigates the mechanism between ethical leadership and employees’ organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) through a justice perspective. We propose that interactional justice serves as a conduit that induces employees’ OCB in response to leaders’ ethical behaviors. The explanatory powers of interactional justice on two forms of OCB – organizational OCB (OCBO) and interpersonal OCB (OCBI) – are compared. Based on data from 34,028 participants in 100 empirical studies, we applied a two-stage meta-analytic structural equations modeling (TSSEM) and found that interactional justice only explains the influence of ethical leadership on employees’ OCBO but not OCBI. Theoretical and managerial implications of our findings are discussed.