The Effect Of Ethical Leadership On Employee Commitment Among Managers In The Transport Sector Parastatals In Kenya

The role of ethical leadership in the creation of a functional organizational culture that nurtures high employee commitment cannot be disputed. This is supported by a vast amount of literature, which attributes positive organizational outcomes to leadership (Obiwuru, Okwu, Akpa & Nwankwere, 2011). Recently, researchers have developed an interest in ethical leadership in view of the significance of ethical behavior in government routines and reporting (Wright, Hassan & Park, 2016). Nonetheless, despite the plethora of leadership theories, empirical literature, and a vast array of leadership training programs, the first decade of this millennium was plagued by a consistent occurrence of ethical malpractices characterized by corporate greed and organizational mega-scandals (Lager, 2010). 

Ethical leadership has been described as the expression of behavior that meets appropriate norms. Ethical leaders achieve this through personal conduct and interactive relationships with subordinates; they must also advance this behavior to their subordinates through mutual interaction, emphasis and decisiveness (Brown, Treviño & Harrison, 2005). Thus, an ethical leader must first be a morally upright person and additionally, be a moral manager by engendering moral behavior among followers. González and Guillén (2002) while referring to total quality management environments, proposed that ethical leadership can be gauged through three constructs namely; technical, moral and psycho-emotive dimensions. Recently, Hawass (2016) advanced the notion that in public sector settings, positive organizational outcomes occur when ethical leaders demonstrate character and empowerment behavior dimensions of leadership. This study collectively used the five dimensions to measure ethical leadership.

The technical dimension of ethical leadership refers to a leader’s combination of technical abilities, including his or her knowledge or technical competencies that provide a basis of his or her influence. The moral dimension is a combination of a leader’s right decisions, actions, good intentions, and moral correctness of behavior. The psycho-emotive dimension consists of a leader’s psychological traits, social skills and his or her ability to create an appealing organizational work climate (González & Guillén, 2002). As described by Sarros and Cooper (2006), the character dimension is the outward expression of personal values and sense of integrity that is intended to achieve morally appropriate outcomes. Hawass (2016) described the empowerment behavior dimension as involving subordinates in setting goals and making decisions, encouraging them to take challenging responsibilities and giving them the opportunity to innovate. 

In an earlier study at the turn of the millennium, Brown et al. (2005) proposed the benefit of ethical leadership towards employee attitudes. They posited that employee commitment to the organization was positively influenced by ethical leadership. This position was supported by Wright et al. (2016) who studied the potential of ethical leadership among employees in a large state government agency. Their hypothesis that employee commitment is positively related to ethical leadership was supported for both self-reported and supervisor-reported employee commitment. A study by Hassan, Mahsud, Yukl and Prussia (2013) examined how leader effectiveness, affective commitment and leadermember exchange relations (LMX) are affected by both ethical and empowering leadership. Through a survey involving 259 assistants of managers in public and private sectors, they found that leadership having ethical and empowering characteristics was positively associated with LMX, affective commitment of subordinates, and how the subordinates perceived the effectiveness of their leaders.

Employee commitment is a multi-dimensional construct that has been widely studied in literature. It was initially defined by Meyer and Allen (1997) as an employee’s psychological bond to an organization which determines the continual stay of the employee in the organization. The authors identified three types of organizational commitment, viz. affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. Affective commitment is a person’s psychological bond to an organization (Luthans, 2011). According to Roxenhall and Andrésen (2012), normative commitment is defined as a person’s feelings of duty to stay with the organization. Continuance commitment has been described by McShane and Von Glinow (2010) as a calculative commitment where an employee weighs the benefits of staying in the organization. This study used the three components to measure organizational commitment.