A study on the effect of ethical leadership on teachers’ moral motivation at schools in Pakistan Shazia Rehman Khan Department of Management Sciences, COMSATS University, Islamabad, Pakistan and Department of Business Studies, Bahria University, Islamabad, Pakistan David C. Bauman Regis University, Denver, Colorado, USA, and Uzma Javed COMSATS University, Islamabad, Pakistan Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of ethical leadership on moral motivation of teachers in the schools of Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach – Scenario-based experimental design was used to collect data (N 5 174 teachers) from 25 schools in the city of Islamabad. Participants included 156 females and 18 males aged 23–37 years. Ethical leadership was measured at both construct and component levels (moral person and moral manager). Findings – The results found that the moral person component of ethical leadership style heightens the moral identity (internalization)-based moral motivation, while the moral manager component and ethical leadership at construct level style increases moral identity (symbolization)-based moral motivation. Interestingly, in the absence of reward, only the moral person component of ethical leadership style maintained participants’ moral motivation. Originality/value – The originality of this study lies in highlighting the divergence in ethical leadership style at component level that explains the differences in moral motivation of the teachers. Keywords Ethical leadership, School leadership, Moral identity, Moral manager, Moral person, Education leadership, Moral motivation Paper type Research paper Ethics is based on moral philosophy, which is about distinguishing between right and wrong reasons and actions. From the leadership ethics perspective, it is about influencing people morally to help them see the right from the wrong. Educational leadership cannot be defined without ethical dimension to it, and due to its emphasis on ethics, it is also defined as value- based activity which revolves around moral purpose (Murphy et al., 2017). School leadership studies have drawn attention to the role of ethical leaders in educational institutions (Shapiro and Stefkovich, 2016; Stefkovich and Begley, 2007; Winston, 2007), emphasizing the importance of ethical leadership in the context of educational institution. Multiple leadership theories with moral connotation are presented, including transformational leadership (Bass, 1991), servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1977), and responsible leadership (Pless and Maak, 2011). But, recently, the most popular theory from social scientific perspective is of ethical leadership, where ethical leadership style is defined as “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making” (Brown et al., 2005). Ethical leadership is based on two foundations: one is Ethical leadership and moral motivation 965 Funding information: This project was funded by COMSATS Research Grant Program Ref No. 16-55/ CRGP/CIIT/IBD/14/592. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0951-354X.htm Received 15 June 2019 Revised 26 December 2019 Accepted 10 January 2020 International Journal of Educational Management Vol. 34 No. 6, 2020 pp. 965-985 © Emerald Publishing Limited 0951-354X DOI 10.1108/IJEM-06-2019-0198