The impact of ethical leadership style on job satisfaction Mediating role of perception of Green HRM and psychological safety Ifzal Ahmad Department of Business Management, Karakoram International University, Gilgit, Pakistan, and Waheed Ali Umrani Department of Business Administration, Sukkur IBA University, Sukkur, Pakistan Abstract Purpose – Combining two distinct streams of research studies in leadership and organizational management i.e. ethical leadership and Green human resource management (Green HRM) practices, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of ethical leadership style (ELS) on employees’ job satisfaction ( JS) with a mediating role of Green HRM and psychological safety in health sector organizations. Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative methodology was adopted to achieve the aims of this study. Data were collected through pencil/paper questionnaires from the respondents (n ¼ 177) working in a public sector healthcare organization of Pakistan. Reliability and validity of measures were tested via AMOS (18) software. Results of proposed hypotheses were tested via Preacher and Hayes (2008) macro of mediation. Findings – Contrary to the first hypothesis, no evidence of the direct impact of ELS on employees’ JS was found. However, the mediating roles of Green HRM and psychological safety were supported by the results. Originality/value – Through this study, the authors have addressed three key gaps in the extant literature of ELS and corporate social responsibility, i.e. exploring the underlying mechanism through which ELS leads to important outcomes with two novel mediators, i.e. Green HRM and psychological safety, the role of ELS in promoting Green HRM in organizations and evidence from a public sector health organization in a developing country, Pakistan. Implications of the study are discussed. Keywords Job satisfaction, Psychological safety, Ethical leadership style, Green HRM Paper type Research paper Introduction The various corporate scandals in the USA such as the BP oil spill, the case of Enron, and in Pakistan, the cases of National Leasing Corporation and temporary closure of Coca Cola factory, etc. have all underlined the importance of ethical leadership. Defined as “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to subordinates through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making” (Brown et al., 2005, p. 120),” ethical leadership is found to be impacting various key employees’ behavioral outcomes such as employee well-being (Chughtai et al., 2015); academic citizenship behavior (Arain et al., 2017); organizational citizenship behavior (Ahmad, Donia, Khan and Waris, 2018), employee performance (Walumbwa et al., 2011), safety performance (Khan et al., 2018), creative performance (Ahmad, Donia, Khan and Waris, 2018); and employees’ innovative work behavior (Yindong and Xinxin, 2013), etc. However, despite the burgeoning attention of research works on an ethical leadership style (ELS), little focus has been given to investigate its impact on job satisfaction ( JS) that is the most commonly used behavioral outcome in business research works (Vlachos et al., 2013). Leadership & Organization Development Journal Vol. 40 No. 5, 2019 pp. 534-547 © Emerald Publishing Limited 0143-7739 DOI 10.1108/LODJ-12-2018-0461 Received 25 December 2018 Revised 11 May 2019 20 May 2019 Accepted 6 June 2019 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/0143-7739.htm This paper is the work of Dr Ifzal Ahmad and Dr Waheed Ali Umrani. The authors are thankful to the anonymous respondents for filling the questionnaires. 534 LODJ 40,5