Ethical leadership, internal job satisfaction and OCB: the moderating role of leader empathy in emerging industries

Leadership with ethical values can generally elicit high levels of employee input behavior. This is particularly important in strategic emerging industries, where job satisfaction among research and development (R&D) personnel plays a crucial role as a primary driver of innovation. While scholars have emphasized the significance of internal work value orientation in recent years, the previous literature has mainly focused on leadership and employee behavior, and few studies have explored spontaneous organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Therefore, this study seeks to investigate the correlation between ethical leadership (EL) and OCB and to consider the moderating role of leader empathy (LE) as well as the mediating role of internal job satisfaction (IJS). The data for this research were collected from 248 R&D personnel employed in companies within China’s emerging industry sector. The analysis was conducted using partial least squares path modeling, and the moderating effect was examined using Hayes’ PROCESS macro. The results validate the idea that IJS serves as a positive mediator of the relationship between EL and OCB. Furthermore, LE plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between IJS and OCB.