Ethical leadership, good governance and employee commitment: Testing a moderated mediation model in public universities of Ethiopia

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Ramakrishna Gollagari,Berhanu Belayneh Beyene,Santap Sanhari Mishra
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2742

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Ethical leadership, good governance and employee

commitment: Testing a moderated mediation model

in public universities of Ethiopia

Ramakrishna Gollagari

1

| Berhanu Belayneh Beyene

2

| Santap Sanhari Mishra

3

1

College of Finance, Management and

Development (CFMD), Ethiopian Civil Service

University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

2

Institute of Leadership and Good Governance

(ILG), Ethiopian Civil Service University, Addis

Ababa, Ethiopia

3

School of Governance and Public Affairs

(SGPA), XIM University, Bhubaneswar, India

Correspondence

Ramakrishna Gollagari, College of Finance,

Management and Development (CFMD),

Ethiopian Civil Service University, Addis

Ababa, Ethiopia.

Email: profgrk@gmail.com

This paper uses a survey design based on cross-sectional data from 186 academic

staff of four public universities representing four generations of universities in Ethio-

pia. The study finds that ethical leadership has a positive and significant effect on

employee commitment and such relationship is mediated by perceived good gover-

nance practices in the public universities. However, there is no moderated mediation

effect of university type (generation) affecting the relationship of good governance

and employee commitment. The study is quite novel in bringing good governance as

a mediator into the relationship between ethical leadership and employee commit-

ment in higher education institutions particularly in the public university context.

KEYWORDS

employee commitment, ethical leadership, Ethiopia, good governance, public universities

1|INTRODUCTION

Ethics is a moral principle that decides how a person consistently

behaves, when not being watched by others. Since ancient times,

ethics has caught the fascination of philosophers and the general pub-

lic. Coming from an old Greek word “ethos,”it basically focuses on

man's virtuous life (Bauman, 2018). Every human being has certain vir-

tues and it is expected to be reflected in their behavior. Verse 21 of

chapter 3 of Bhagavad Gita (an ancient Hindu literature) tells whatso-

ever a highly placed person does; the same is done by others. It means

people follow the examples set by their leaders. The modern “ethical

leadership”has a direct source of this virtue ethics as advocated by

Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle (Bauman, 2017; Sison

et al., 2012) and Bauman (2018) confirmed ethical leadership as

synonymous with virtuous leader. Plato's idea of philosopher-king is a

virtuous leader who is well-educated and trained. Based on the educa-

tion system and socio-cultural context of each country, the degree of

endorsement of ethical leadership aspects varies considerably (Martin

et al., 2009).

Several research studies on ethical leadership have been con-

ducted in the realm of both public sector (Asencio, 2019;Lu&

Guy, 2014; Young et al., 2019) and private sector (Agha et al., 2017;

Celik et al., 2015; Rizwan et al., 2017; Schwepker Jr., 2019). But in the

context of educational organizations, ethical leadership studies have

its own relevance due to the fact that educational institutions play a

vital role for the development of ethical behaviors. During primary

years, teachers lay the foundation of children's ethical premises.

During this period students' learning on ethical behaviors merely

depend upon simple instructions, stories or examples. But in higher

educational institutions, adult students and also employees can refine

their ethical behaviors from the examples set by their own educational

leaders. It has been argued that most studies on ethical leadership of

educational leaders have focused on lower educational institutions

(Acar et al., 2012; Rizwan et al., 2017; Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2011).

However, the ethical dimensions of educational leaders in the context

of higher institutions have been paid less attention, resulting in less

research output (Everson & Bussey, 2007; Hanson, 2009; Singh &

Rathore, 2014).

There are several studies on ethical leadership that have come up

linking ethical leadership with various concepts like employee commit-

ment (Agha et al., 2017; Celik et al., 2015; Mitonga-Monga &

Cilliers, 2016), job satisfaction (Celik et al., 2015; Rizwan et al., 2017),

individual performance (Schwepker Jr., 2019), organizational justice

(Acar et al., 2012), social justice (Everson & Bussey, 2007), job engage-

ment (Lu & Guy, 2014), organizational citizenship behavior (Mitonga-

Monga & Cilliers, 2016), good governance (Naidoo, 2012;

Received: 24 September 2020 Revised: 27 June 2021 Accepted: 2 August 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2742

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2742. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of12

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2742