The purpose of this study is to investigate how ethical leadership impacts employees’ innovative work behavior among public employees through the mediating role of group cohesiveness. This work further offers deeper insight into the moderating mechanism of openness to experience in the relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ innovative work behavior.
Three time-lagged sets of data (n = 532) were collected among Vietnamese public employees. The partial least squares – structural equation modeling method was applied to test the research hypotheses.
Ethical leadership positively relates to employees’ innovative work behavior. Furthermore, group cohesiveness plays a mediating role in the link between ethical leadership and employees’ innovative work behavior. The moderating impact of openness to experience between ethical leadership and employees’ innovative work behavior is supported.
This inquiry is probably the first attempt to explore the mechanism linking ethical leadership and employees’ innovative work behavior through the mediator of group cohesiveness. Additionally, this study extends the current knowledge by investigating the moderating role of openness to experience in ethical leadership and employees’ innovative work behavior nexus.
