تاثیر رهبری اخلاقی بر رفتار شهروندی سازمانی: نقش مدیریت اهرم کاری در محل کار The impact of ethical leadership on organizational citizenship behavior: The moderating role of workplace ostracism

1. Introduction The relationship between ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is an important topic for understanding the effect of ethical leadership within an organization. For the past decade, researchers have explained the relationship between ethical leadership and OCB through two perspectives: social learning theory (Bandura, 1986) and social exchange theory (Blau, 1964). Ethical leaders are regarded as role models in caring for and respecting others’ well-being; subordinates imitate their leaders’ behaviors by becoming caring toward their coworkers and organizations (Frisch and Huppenbauer, 2014; Mayer et al., 2009). Ethical leaders treat all subordinates with respect and care that can develop high-quality affective exchange relationship between them and their subordinates, which in turn elicits OCB (Mayer et al., 2009; Newman et al., 2011). However, there are two gaps that need to be addressed. First, with the escalating influence of workplace ostracism on organizational behavior, workplace ostracism has become a concern for organizations. Some research works have examined the association between workplace ostracism and employees’ citizenship. Ferris et al. (2015) theorized and found that ostracized employees showed lower self-esteem and engaged less in citizenship behavior in order to be consistent with their deficient self-views. Leung et al. (2011) reported that ostracized employees engage less in citizenship behavior which leads to a lower level of engagement at work; being ostracized depletes employees’ regulatory resources. A recent research based on a social identity perspective shows that workplace ostracism decreases citizenship behavior by undermining employees’ identification with the organization (Wu et al., 2016). Workplace ostracism, which refers to an individual’s perception of being ignored or excluded at work (Ferris et al., 2008), has been demonstrated to negatively affect core employee attitudes and behaviors, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, prosocial behavior, and well-being (Ferris et al., 2008; Balliet and Ferris, 2013; Leung et al., 2011). When individuals are ostracized, they perceive themselves to be outsiders from the group and believe they are different from their colleagues, thus threatening their sense of belonging (Williams, 2007).