Does Ethical Leadership Boost Nurses' Patient-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behaviors? A cross-sectional study.

AIMS: To examine the relationships between perceived ethical leadership, perceived interactional justice climate and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behavior. DESIGN: A cross-sectional non-experimental design was employed. METHODS: The convenience sampling was adopted. Data were collected in July and August, 2018. A total of 738 nurses were recruited from eight Chinese hospitals. The survey included instrument scales of ethical leadership, interactional justice climate and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behavior. SPSS version 22 was used to compute means, standard deviations and intercorrelations. The partial least squares structural equation modeling was chosen to estimate the path coefficients of the relationships. RESULTS: Relationships among perceived ethical leadership, perceived interactional justice climate and organizational citizenship behaviors were statistically significant. Perceived interactional justice climate mediated the relationship between perceived ethical leadership and nurses' organizational citizenship behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: Ethical leadership is related to interactional justice climate, which in turn, increases nurses' organizational citizenship behavior. Nurse leaders are encouraged to exhibit ethical behaviors and to create justice climate. Ethical leadership scale can be used to select, train and evaluate the nurse supervisors and managers. IMPACT: Hospital administrators are encouraged to recruit and promote those with both moral compass and leadership potential to nursing leadership positions. Nursing managers should create a justice climate in their hospitals. Hospital administrators could use ethical leadership scale to develop ethical leadership training programs.