The Relationship of Ethical Leadership with Ethical Behavior: Mediating Role of Perceived Organizational Virtuousness and Moderating Role of Person-Job Fit

Ethical behaviors as regulators of human relations are able to determine the ethical performance of employees and create an ethical organization which can also make the organization successful. In this regard, leaders at different levels of organizations play an important role in the development and maintenance of ethical culture and ethical behavior of members of the organization. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of ethical leadership with employees’ ethical behavior of Guilan tax affairs administrations with regard to the mediating role of perceived organizational virtuousness and the moderating role of person-job fit.

This study is an applied type in terms of purpose and according to the approach, it is a descriptive and correlational study. The study statistical population consisted of Guilan tax affairs administrations’ staff in Rasht, Lahijan, and Anzali as selected clusters, and 285 of them were selected as the sample by a simple random sampling method. In order to collect the data, the standard questionnaires of ethical leadership of Brown, Treviño, & Harrison (2005), ethical behavior of Lu & Lin (2013), perceived organizational virtuousness of Cameron,Bright, &Caza(2004), and person-job fit of Saks &Ashforth (1997) were used. Data analysis was performed using hierarchical regression analysis and Spss24 software.

The results showed that ethical leadership affects the ethical behavior of employees directly and indirectly through the mediating variable of perceived organizational virtuousness. However, it was found that the person-job fit does not play a moderating role in the relationship between perceived organizational virtuousness and employee ethical behavior.

Therefore, the leader of an organization as an ethical pattern of the organization can be effective in encouraging the ethical behavior of employees, and naturally, their ethics also contribute to the development of organizational virtuousness and employees’ ethical behavior.