Linking Ethical Leadership and Ethical Climate to Employees’ Ethical Behavior: The Moderating Role of Person–Organization Fit

With the growing demand for ethical standards in the prevailing business environment, ethical leadership has been under increasingly more focus. Based on the social exchange theory and social learning theory, this study scrutinised the impact of ethical leadership on the presentation of ethical conduct by employees through the ethical climate. Notably, this study scrutinised the moderating function of the person-organisation fit (P-O fit) in relation of ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees. In line with the hypotheses, the outcomes from a sample of 295 workers working in different Iraqi entities exhibited a positive relation between the ethical behaviour of leaders and the ethical conduct of employees in the ethical climate. Moreover, it was observed that the P-O fit of employees moderated the relationship between ethical climate and the ethical conduct of employees such that the relationship was more robust for those with a high P-O fit in comparison to those with a low P-O fit. The theoretic and practical inferences of these observations are discussed below.