Su Wei, Hahn Juhee
School of Management, Putian University, Putian 351100, China.
Department of Business Management, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 06974, Republic of Korea.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2025 Mar 18;15(3):380. doi: 10.3390/bs15030380.
Compared to the formal rules and regulations of large companies, leadership behavior has a greater influence on employee behaviors in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Unlike large enterprises, many SMEs have a weaker market position, and their survival and development depend on employees' willingness to make additional efforts beyond their formal job duties. Thus, this study focuses on SME employees to explore the effect of ethical leadership on subordinates' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This study proposes a multilevel mediating model, where ethical climate and ethical role modeling represent cognitive social learning perspectives at the team and individual levels, respectively, while affective well-being serves as an individual-level affective perspective. A total of 426 valid questionnaires from 71 teams were collected, and MPLUS was used to verify the study hypotheses. The results indicate that (1) ethical leadership has a significant positive impact on employee OCB; (2) ethical leadership also significantly affects team ethical climate, ethical role modeling, and affective well-being; and (3) the partial mediating effects of team ethical climate, ethical role modeling, and affective well-being are confirmed. This research provides empirical evidence for the mechanism between ethical leadership and employee OCB in SMEs.
与大公司的正式规章制度相比，领导行为对中小企业员工行为的影响更大。与大企业不同，许多中小企业的市场地位较弱，它们的生存和发展依赖于员工在正式工作职责之外做出额外努力的意愿。因此，本研究聚焦于中小企业员工，以探讨道德领导对下属组织公民行为（OCB）的影响。本研究提出了一个多层次中介模型，其中道德氛围和道德榜样分别代表团队层面和个体层面的认知社会学习视角，而情感幸福感则作为个体层面的情感视角。共收集了来自71个团队的426份有效问卷，并使用MPLUS来验证研究假设。结果表明：（1）道德领导对员工的组织公民行为有显著的正向影响；（2）道德领导也显著影响团队道德氛围、道德榜样和情感幸福感；（3）团队道德氛围、道德榜样和情感幸福感的部分中介作用得到证实。本研究为中小企业中道德领导与员工组织公民行为之间的作用机制提供了实证依据。
