The impact of leaders' ethical behavior on certain individual and organizational effects: the Serbian case

This paper presents the results of research into the influence of ethical leadership behavior on certain individual and organizational effects in Serbian companies. Specifically, the study involves the examination of the impact of ethical leadership on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and financial performance. Job satisfaction and organizational commitment are viewed as individual effects and financial performance as organizational effects. In addition, we examined the moderating effect of professional respect and confidence in the actions of management on the observed relations. The data were obtained by using questionnaires completed by 380 middle managers from 102 companies in Serbia. The main conclusions of the study are: 1. Ethical leadership behavior has a stronger positive impact on individual effects rather than on organizational effects. 2. Both moderators show a similar operating direction of moderation: in unfavorable conditions, ethical leadership behavior has a much higher impact on the observed effects. Practically, in adverse circumstances, employees may have less tolerance for the unethical behavior of their leader.