Effect of leadership styles on attitude of sports team managers towards change with mediating role of ethical intelligence

The current research work was conducted with the aim of the influence of leadership styles on the attitude of the managers of sports boards towards change with the mediating role of ethical intelligence.

The method used in this research work was based on the field implementation and correlation type, and specifically based on the structural equation model. The statistical population of this research work included all the managers of the sports boards of Alborz province (336 people), according to the Morgan's table; the number of statistical samples was equal to 179 people, who were selected randomly among the statistical population. To collect the data, three standard questionnaires were used, Hersey and Blanchard's leadership style (1999), and Jung's attitude towards change (2004), and to check ethical intelligence, the Link and Keel's (2011) standard questionnaire was used, and the reliability and validity of all variables has also been approved, and in the statistical method used, the data was analyzed using structural equations.

The results showed that there is a causal relationship between the leadership style, the attitude towards change, and the moral intelligence of the managers of sports teams in the Alborz province. On the other hand, moral intelligence also has an effect on the attitude towards the change of managers of the organization. Then the results of the test showed that ethical intelligence mediates the relationship between leadership style and attitude towards change of managers.

The research results showed that leadership is one of the important factors in creating positive changes in organizations. Also the type of leadership style is an essential component for successful change in the organization in order to face the competition and progress in sports teams. By connecting ethics with leadership, we realized that ethics is all about the identity of the leader and the role of the leader, so it is suggested that by empowering the leadership, encouraging and motivating people to create new ideas, the attitude of managers towards change should be developed, and with simultaneous application appropriate leadership style and promotion of ethical intelligence can improve the attitude towards change in managers.