57 THE IMPACTS OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP ON THE ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR OF EMPLOYEES: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF ETHICAL CLIMATE *Meral Elçi **İrge Şener *Lütfihak Alpkan * Gebze Institute of Technology, Turkey *Çankaya University, Turkey ABSTRACT Antisocial behaviors of employees lead to unfavorable outcomes for the organization. Creating an ethical environment through developing ethical leadership and building an ethical environment in the organizations, the antisocial behaviors of employees could be decreased. With this study, it was intended to investigate the effect of both ethical leadership and ethical climate on the occurrence of antisocial behaviors of employees. Using a sample of 468 employees in 30 firms operating in various industries in İstanbul, Kocaeli, Ankara and Antalya from Turkey, we find support for the hypothesized model. The findings of the research indicate a negative effect of presence of ethical leadership on the antisocial behaviors of employees. Besides, ethical climate both has a negative effect on antisocial behaviors of employees and also it mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and the antisocial behaviors of employees. Keywords: ethical leadership, ethical climate, workplace antisocial behavior, mediation effects INTRODUCTION Forestalling of antisocial behaviors in organizations is increasingly becoming important to the managers and organizational scholars. According to the report of Di Martino et al (2003:1), recent estimates suggest a good reason for both managers and researchers to take a closer look at these actions. This is due to the economy becoming more global and increasing competition for market shares and survival, which leads to pressures mounting on workers. The authors state that, with relatively high levels of crime in most EU countries, violence finds its way into the workplace in the form of robbery and assault, particularly affecting front-line staff and service-providers. Along with growing pressure, aggression may also build up within the workplace, making violence between workers more likely. On the other hand, occupational stress has in recent years assumed epidemic proportions, affecting workers across most sectors and industries; violence may be an important source of stress, but may also result from a stressful working environment. However, recent European studies indicate that it is psychological violence and harassment, rather than physical violence, which represents the greatest threat to most workers. Due to the increasing diversity of the workforce, a number of studies also show the frequent presence of harassment on the basis of race or gender (Di Martino et al, 2003:1). A comprehensive report of sexual harassment in EU countries was compiled for the European Commission in 1998. According to this report, between 30% – 50% of female employees have experienced some form of sexual harassment. When the particular type of harassment was considered, 10% – 26% of them were found to have experienced so-called quid pro quosexual harassment and 1% – 6% of them experienced severe forms of sexual harassment, such as assault or rape. The same study also concluded that, comparatively speaking, much fewer studies had been undertaken in southern European countries as opposed to northern Europe (Di Martino et al, 2003: 39). The results of a Spanish study (Piñuel y Zabala, 2002) combining two samples of a broad sector-wide sample and a sample from the tourism sector, reveals important findings. One of the key findings of the study is that a total of 16% of the sample were found to be exposed to psychological violence, measured as exposure to at least one negative behavior associated with psychological violence for the last 6 months on a weekly or more frequent basis. In addition, 45% of the sample indicated that they witnessed bullying. Based on figures from the Portuguese General Inspectorate of Labor (Inspecção-Geral do Trabalho, 2001) concerning sanctions Journal of Global Strategic Management | V. 7 | N. 2 | 2013-December | isma.info | 57-66 | DOI: 10.20460/JGSM.2013715667