The impact of leaders' ethical behavior on certain individual and organizational efects: the Serbian case * Dragana Sajfert, Milan Nikolić, Jelena Vukonjanski, Edit Terek, Marko Vulović ** This paper presents the results of research into the influence of ethical leadership behavior on certain individual and organizational effects in Serbian companies. Specifically, the study in- volves the examination of the impact of ethical leadership on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and financial performance. Job satisfaction and organizational commitment are viewed as individual effects and financial performance as organizational effects. In addition, we examined the moderating effect of professional respect and confidence in the actions of management on the observed relations. The data were obtained by using questionnaires com- pleted by 380 middle managers from 102 companies in Serbia. The main conclusions of the study are: 1. Ethical leadership behavior has a stronger positive impact on individual effects rather than on organizational effects. 2. Both moderators show a similar operating direction of moderation: in unfavorable conditions, ethical leadership behavior has a much higher impact on the observed effects. Practically, in adverse circumstances, employees may have less toler- ance for the unethical behavior of their leader. Keywords: Ethical leadership, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, financial perfor- mance, Serbia. Introduction In recent years, people have been talking more and more about leadership, and ethical leadership is being encouraged because of the significant number of scandals which have arisen as the consequence of the unethical behavior of lead- ers (Kalshoven/Den Hartog 2009). Such scandals have attracted both the atten- tion of the public and researchers addressing the issue of ethical leadership. In addition, the ethical behavior of leaders is placed on the priority list of organiza- tions, primarily due to the strong impact on the trust and reputation of an organi- 1 * Received: 30.05.2015, accepted: 28.07.2016, 4 revisions. ** Dragana Sajfer, M.Sc., Dept. of Management, Technical Faculty “Mihajlo Pupin”, Univer- sity of Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Serbia. Email: sdragana77@hotmail.com. Main research inter- ests: Organizational behavior, ethical leadership. Milan Nikolić, Prof., Dept. of Management, Technical Faculty “Mihajlo Pupin”, University of Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Serbia. Email: mikaczr@sbb.rs. Main research interests: Organiza- tional behavior, public relations. Jelena Vukonjanski, PhD, Dept. of Management, Technical Faculty “Mihajlo Pupin”, Uni- versity of Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Serbia. Email: jelena.vukonjanski@gmail.com. Main re- search interests: Organizational behavior, public relations. Edit Terek (corresponding author), PhD, Dept. of Management, Technical Faculty “Mihajlo Pupin”, University of Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Serbia. Email: edit@tfzr.us.ac.rs. Main research interests: Organizational behavior, public relations. Marko Vulović, M.Sc., Dept. of Management, Technical Faculty “Mihajlo Pupin”, Univer- sity of Novi Sad, Zrenjanin, Serbia. Email: markowstm@yahoo.com. Main research inter- ests: Organizational behavior, ethical leadership. 444 The impact of leaders' ethical behavior on certain individual and organizational efects JEEMS, 22 (4) 2017, 444 – 483 DOI: 10.5771/0949-6181-2017-4-444 https://doi.org/10.5771/0949-6181-2017-4-444 Generiert durch IP '35.173.229.146', am 26.11.2021, 04:44:37. Das Erstellen und Weitergeben von Kopien dieses PDFs ist nicht zulässig.