Integrating relational systems theory with ethical leadership: how ethical leadership relates to employee turnover intentions

Purpose

As ethical leadership has advanced as a construct, the degree to which healthy relational systems explain its effect on employee outcomes has been understudied. With this manuscript we conceptualize and test a model based on a Relational Systems approach to ethical leadership and its relationship with conflict and turnover intentions.

Design/methodology/approach

Two studies were conducted to test our hypothesized first- and second-stage moderated mediation model. In Study 1, online surveys were completed by 168 working adults across two different time points. Study 2 extended Study 1 by surveying 115 working adults across three time points using the Mechanical Turk platform.

Findings

The indirect relationship between ethical leadership and turnover intentions via relationship conflict was conditional based on follower moral identity. The negative influence of ethical leadership on relationship conflict and, in turn, turnover intentions was stronger for followers who had higher moral identities. In addition, our findings suggest that leader holding behaviors strengthen the negative indirect effects of ethical leadership on turnover intentions.

Originality/value

This paper demonstrates the usefulness of a Relational Systems theoretical approach to understanding ethical leadership. Specifically, ethical leaders, through their desire and ability to help employees feel known and not alone at work, are better able to reduce relationship conflict and, in turn, reduce employees' desire to leave the organization.

Human Resource Practice Management for Knowledge Intensive Team: IMPACT on Team Innovation Performance and Substitution Effect of Empowerment Leadership

As an important factor in society development, human resource management is crucial to enhance the effectiveness of an organization. In this paper, the research focuses on the human resource management practice in knowledge-intensive teams, and studies the relationship between knowledge sharing and team innovation performance in combination with the practice of ability improvement, opportunity improvement and motivation improvement, aiming at verifying the various research hypotheses, practical policy suggestions are proposed to improve the enterprises management. A leadership substitution model is used to introduce empowerment leadership as the boundary condition to the analysis framework, and the regulatory effect of the empowerment leadership on human resource management practice and team knowledge sharing are discussed through the method of empirical analysis. The analysis results showed the substitution effect between cross-level empowerment leadership and human resource management practice and proved an alternative role between human resource management practice and empowerment leadership in a knowledge-intensive team, which provides a preliminary research basis for later research. The results fully demonstrate that for knowledge-intensive teams, more targeted human resource management practice is needed as the theoretical support. Based on leadership substitution theory, this study explored the relationship between human resource practice and innovation, trying to extend the reverse effect of leadership substitution theory. A cross-layer model is discussed as the paper distinguished implementation of human resource management practices and perceived human resource management practice.