Virtuous leadership and employees’ attitudes and work behaviors

Abstract

This study examined virtuous leadership’s effect on employees’ attitudes and work behaviors, more specifically, their affective commitment, turnover intention, and individual performance. The analyses also focused on affective commitment’s mediating role in therelationships between virtuous leadership and both turnover intention and individual performance. The sample consisted of 280 workers from diverse business sectors, who voluntarily filled out an electronic survey. The results suggest that, first, workers’ perception of virtuous leadership significantly is correlated with their levels of affective commitment, turnover intention, and individual performance. Second, affective commitment is linked to turnover intention and individual performance, and, third, the relationship between virtuous leadership and turnover intention is partially mediated by affective commitment. Last, the relationship between workers’ perception of virtuous leadership and their individual performance is fully mediated by affective commitment. The findings suggest that virtuous leaders can generate an emotionally committed workforce that is motivated to stay in the same organization and strive to achieve higher levels of individual performance—if supervisors exhibit significant virtues in the workplace.