Impact of Ethical Leadership on Organizational Commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior with Mediating role of Intrinsic Motivation

Ethical leadership in the field of organizational behavior and management has emerged as a significant area of interest in the recent leadership literature. There are, however, few studies that empirically examine the impact of ethical leadership through mediation processes on organizational engagement and citizenship actions. We have built a conceptual model to check whether ethical leadership effects the organizational citizenship behaviour and commitment of organizational citizenship through the mediation of intrinsic motivation. For data collection, sample size of 340 was determined through item response theory. Data was collected through self-administrated questionnaire from different commercial banks located in geographical premises of Lahore, Pakistan. SPSS and AMOS software were used to carry out the analysis, structural equation modeling technique was applied to test the direct and indirect relationships. The results indicated that ethical leadership has a positive effect on the association of organizational commitment and citizenship behaviour within organizations. In fact, intrinsic motivation mediates between the relationship of ethical leadership and the conduct of organizational citizenship. Nevertheless, results also show that in the banking sector there is no mediating effect of intrinsic motivation between ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour. Limitations have been discussed, as have future guidelines.


INTRODUCTION
In the current business era, where the competition among business organizations is fierce, the role of human capital has become more essential. To achieve the competitive advantage and superior performance, organizations need employees with higher level of organizational commitment and citizenship behavior towards organizations. Employees that go beyond their job description, their commitment level is the key to success for the organizations. However, in the current era ethical scandals i.e., frauds, exploitation, deceptions and corruption are found everywhere whether it is small or big organization, developing country or developed, public sector organization or private. Therefore, the reductions of such actions are crucial in all type of organizations of both emerging and advanced economies. The role of ethical leadership in this situation becomes more vital. The concept of ethical leadership becomes more important in the context of developing countries, especially in Pakistan. As the developing countries face more challenges in ethical business practices due to weak regulatory infrastructure, moreover low ethics standards can reduce organizational commitment and citizenship behavior among the employees. Therefore, the role of ethical leaders is very central in the organizations. Ethical leader is one who set himself as an example of right values and strong character (Stewart, 2006). The leader with right values and strong character inspires employees to develop their internal motivation with the work and organization, which in turn enhance their commitment towards organization. This phenomenon not only improves employees' job performance but also helps organizations to achieve the financial and non-financial goals.
In the recent past top-level executives of the organizations have been found involved in unethical practices, which enticed academic researchers to work on the topic of ethical leadership. The topic has been examined and tested by the various research studies to analyze the impact of ethics and ethical leadership on various factor of organizational behavior (Cappelli, 2009;Zona et al., 2013). Brown et al. (2005) describe the term Ethical Leadership as "a display of acceptable moral behavior through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and promoting such behavior to followers through bidirectional communication, encouragement and decision-making" (p. 120). According to, Ethical leadership in the organization helps employees to develop strong character and right values because, ethical person tends to be more fair, honest, self-disciplined and trustworthy Zhu et al. (2010). Hansen et al. (2013) argued that in many organizations the scandals subject to ethics were triggered by the leadership of the organizations. Leadership scandals related to morality and ethics are of highly significant as they mold the mindset and attitude of the subordinate employees. While there are numerous studies that analyze the impact of EL on OCB and OC, however, studies are scant which empirically analyze the intervening effect of intrinsic motivation through which ethical leadership relates to organizational citizenship behavior and commitment. Intrinsic motivation plays an important role between the relationship of ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment. The current research study aims to empirically test the intervening effect of intrinsic motivation on the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment of the employees.
There is a blurred association of ethical leadership idea among individuals working in organizations of developed countries, there is a high significance to ponder over the topic of ethical leadership and its ways that would support to inculcate in the sense of employees about organizational commitment. In the same fashion, studies are scarce which shows the relationship with organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and intrinsic motivation (IM) (Barbuto and Story, 2011). The current study, therefore, will report the gap in literature by investigating the influence of EL on OCB and OC through the mediating effect of Intrinsic Motivation.

Ethical Leadership
In the recent studies, ethical leadership have emerged as an important topic of interest in the studies of organizational behavior. The showing of normatively of appropriate behavior by one's personal actions and interpersonal relationships, moreover promotion of this behavior to the followers by two-way communication, decision making, and reinforcement is called ethical leadership (Brown et al., 2005).

Intrinsic Motivation
"Intrinsic motivation is a person's tendency to do the jobs better to achieve inner satisfaction which can lead to high levels of positive feelings and performance" (Warr et al.,1979).

Organizational Citizenship Behavior
By Organ (1997) it is explained as "contributions to the maintenance and enhancement of the social and psychological context that supports task performance."

Organizational Commitment
Organizational commitment refers to "the tendency of social activists to spend their energy and express loyalty to a social system or emotional attachment to a section of the organization, independent of the utility value of this relation" (Rashid et al., 2003). Trevino et al, (2008) initiated the efforts to explore the experimental aspects of the ethical leadership. Trevino et al. (2000) argued that the status of being leader consist of Two basic treats of personality, that is his moral standard are of high class both as a person and supervisor. The other essential treat is leader must motivate subordinates through right way and code of conduct, that is to deal with employees with right norms and he should be nondiscriminatory in his dealings with others. Moreover, the way leader exerts on subordinates', subordinates acts in the same manners (Brown et al., 2005). The study of exertion characteristic of the leader on subordinate is interesting and by analyzing the character of the ethical leadership on subordinates this study will explore how subordinates and their work tasks are influenced by the act of the ethical leaders. Under this discussion, the current research study predict that the OCB would be impact by the ethical leadership. The definition of the OCB has been presented by Organ (1997) as "contributions to the maintenance and enhancement of the social and psychological context that supports task performance." As stated by Cognitive evaluation theory, the feeling of freedom and autonomy is developed by subordinates when the level of self-respect, competency and self-confidence with their leaders is at high level (Den Hartog and Belschak, 2012). Therefore, the first hypothesis of the study is: H 1 : Ethical Leadership have a positive impact on the OCB.

Ethical Leadership and Intrinsic Motivation
When a person has a positive response combined with his interest, feeling of commitment and engagement and curiosity of his work is consequence of intrinsic motivation normally (Olafsen et al., 2015;Deci et al., 2017). According to Deci et al. (2017), activities performance is because of pleasure, curiosity and satisfaction while performing the tasks is a base of intrinsic motivation. Acknowledgement, rewards and recognition are not included as factor for intrinsic motivation (Olafsen et al., 2015). Intrinsic motivation of workers can be enhanced through ethical leadership because of et al., 2010; influence exert by leaders like autonomy of high level that assist employees to enjoy self-determination in an autonomous culture and take in of their tasks. Initiative (Weinstein et al., 2011;, Deci et al., 2017. Empirical evidences can be drawn from the study of Yidong and Xinxin (2013) which was conducted in Chinese business organizations which demonstrated employees' intrinsic motivation at its advance level when an ethical leader guide them. Therefore, supposed hypothesis would be as: H 2 : Ethical Leadership have a positive impact on intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic Motivation Mediation between Ethical Leadership and Organizational Commitment
Organizational commit has been started to investigate by the researches in 1960s (Hajikarimi and Soltani, 2016). According to Yeh (2014), accepting of organizational values, recognizing its existence, being loyal to the objectives of the organization by its employees is actually described to be as organizational commitment. According to Mayer, Allen and Smith (1993) there are three categories of organizational commitment i.e., affective, normative and continuous commitment. Commitment is such a variable, according to researchers, which have power to motivate people towards different actions and behaviors (Herrbach, 2006). It has been discussed that association between autonomous motivation, intrinsic motivation and organizational commitment exists (Caniago and Hayati, 2012). Consisting of commitment as a requirement for the construction of motivation (Bruggeman and De Baerdemaeker, 2015). Galletta et al. (2011), validated the association between intrinsic motivation and organizational commitment. H 3 : Intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between EL and OC.

Mediating Role of Intrinsic Motivation between Ethical Leadership and OCB
According to Lou and Zhu (2004), when skills and abilities of employees are directed in best manner and efforts are also improved by ethical leaders to get the job done, then in return, employees feel strong sense of proficiency and capability to produce the intended outcomes by revealing their intrinsic motivation. Moreover, emphasis on getting the goals of organization completed then employees do work by valuing and showing morality in their obligations that add value to their motivation . Lazauskaite-Zabielske et al. (2015) commented that one significant element of OCB is intrinsic motivation of employees. Intrinsically motivated employees like to do their work and after that they help their colleagues and work voluntarily for the organization. Therefore, they develop their OCB (Ryan and Connell, 1989). So, this study will show the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation towards ethical leadership and OCB. Hence, we postulate as: H 4 : Intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between EL and OCB. Figure 1 represents ethical leadership and its correlates with mediating role of intrinsic motivation.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The study used quantitative method and non-contrived or natural environment with minimal interference of researchers. The nature of the study was explanatory and hypotheses were tested for evidence. The data was collected at single point of time; thus, it was cross sectional and self-administrated questionnaires were distributed among the respondents to collect the data from employees of banking sector of the Lahore, Punjab Pakistan. The target population of the study was employees working in commercial banks situated in the geographical premises of the Lahore, Pakistan. Since the exact number of employees in the banking sector were unknown as banks have restrictions to access the employees' number or their relevant information, thus convenience sampling technique was used and sample size of 340 was determined through item response theory. For data analysis, SPSS 21 and AMOS software's were used, and Structural equational modeling technique was applied to analyze the direct and indirect impacts. Bootstrapping with confidence interval of 95% and 3000 bootstrap was applied to achieve the more concrete results.

Measures of the Research Instrument
A self-administrated questionnaire consists of items were distributed among the respondents, all items of the questionnaires were evaluated on the base of 5-pointLikert Scale.
(1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) for all variables of this study.

Organizational commitment
Organizational commitment measured by the scale which is developed by Ragu-Nathan et al. (2008), it consists of total of 4 items. Cronbach alpha .804 which shows data fulfill the reliability.

Organizational citizenship behavior
The construct OCB consist of 5 items from Joireman, Joireman et al. (2006), and Cronbach alpha is 0.659 which shows data fulfill the reliability.

Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation was evaluated with 15 item scale from Amabile et al. (1994). Its Cronbach alpha is 0.713 which shows data fulfill the reliability.

Ethical leadership
Was evaluated by using a 10 item Ethical Leadership Scale (ELS) which is developed by Brown et al. (2005). Cronbach alpha is 0.759 which shows data fulfill the reliability.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The following sections represents the results of this study in detail.
The Table 1 shows descriptive analysis of the data, minimum, maximum values, mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis of the data use in the current study. Mean value of OCB is 3.7645, Organizational Commitment 3.8595, Ethical leadership 3.6906 and Intrinsic motivation is 3.6682, their standard deviation is 0.62473, 0.77172, 0.55676 and 0.46228 respectively. Skewness of OCB is −0.335, OC is −0.977, EL is −0.613 and IM is −0.242, moreover kurtosis values are −0.068, 0.747, 1.275 and 0.042 respectively. As it can be seen from table all values fall within the acceptable range. So, the data is normally distributed and can be used for further analysis.

Correlation Analysis
The correlation matrix in Table 2 shows that the all four constructs i.e., organisational citizenship behaviour, organisational commitment, ethical leadership and intrinsic motivation are positively correlated at high significant level. The correlation of OCB with OC is (b=0.444, P < 0.01), EL (b=0.406, P < 0.01) and IM (b = 0.692, P < 0.01). Similarly, all other variables are also positively correlated at significant level of (P < 0.01).

Measurement Model
Prior to run structural equational modelling for direct and indirect path analysis, we performed confirmatory factor analysis to fulfil the model fitness criteria by using AMOS. The Figure 2 shows the measurement model, measurement model is important in defining validity of each construct and to find relationships between observed and latent variables.
From Tables 3 and 4 it is evident that the factors loadings of items of the variables are well above the threshold values of .300, higher factor loadings represent strong bonding of the items with their respective variables. In the current analysis 2 items of intrinsic motivation were dropped from the analysis as they shown poor regression weights <0.300, moreover, 2 items of ethical leadership and 1 item of organizational citizenship behavior also were dropped in the AMOS analysis as they shown poor regression weights. The error terms were covariate to achieve the model fitness. Table 5 shows model fitness criteria summary of various indicators, it is evident that the CMIN/DF is 1.895, GFI is 0.937, AGFI is 0.903, comparative fit index value is 0.944, PCLOSE 0.255 and value of root mean square error is 0.055. the third row of the table shows the standard acceptable values of the indicators, and it is found that all the values are within the acceptable range, hence we can perform SEM to analyze the direct and indirect impact.

Structural Equation Modeling
Figure 3 tells us about structural model relating independent with dependents and mediator. Model fit summary for structural model was within the recommended parameters where CMIN/DF is 1.895, GFI is 0.937, AGFI is .903, comparative fit index value is 0.944, PCLOSE 0.255 and value of root mean square error is 0.055. Then the model was tested for mediaion analysis.

Mediation Effect
The Table 6 represent the direct and indirect effect of ethical leadership on organizational citizenship behavior and organizational    commitment of the employees. The impact of ethical leadership on organizational citizenship behavior without mediation is (b = 0.348, P < 0.001), hence it positively effects the organizational citizenship behavior. The direct impact of EL on OC is (b = 0.713, P < 0.001), so it also enhances the OC. Moreover, with mediation impact of IM on organizational citizenship behavior is (b = 0.467, P < 0.01), whereas EL impact on OC is (b = 0.785, P < 0.01).
The mediational effect of IM on the relationship between EL and OCB is found positive and significant (b = 0.321, P < 0.01), hence there is partial mediation, however, there is no mediation between EL and OC.

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
One of the primary objectives of the current study was to determine the mediational effect of the intrinsic motivation between the relationship ethical leadership, organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment of the employees, in the developing country context, especially in Pakistan. The empirical analysis found that intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between EL and OCB, while it has no indirect effect on the relationship between EL and OC. It can be induced that employee's intrinsic motivation plays important part in motivating them to adopt organizational citizenship behavior while ethical leadership is the most important factor in citizenship behavior and organizational commitment of the employees. However, intrinsic motivation has no significant mediational role in increasing the organizational commitment of the employees. So, the employees with intrinsic motivation will adopt more organizational citizenship behavior as compared to employees without intrinsic motivation, but to enhance organizational commitment particularly in banking sector of Pakistan, leadership of the organization must come up ethical guidelines and ethical leadership is the key to enhance organizational commitment. Not surprisingly, the results show that like developed countries ethical leadership has an positive impact on the organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment (Caniago and Hayati, 2012, Galletta et al., 2011 in the developing countries aspect as well, so the second objective is also fulfilled which was to determine the direct impact of ethical leadership on organizational commitment and citizenship behavior of the employees. Except one hypothesis that is intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between organizational commitment and ethical leadership, all other were accepted. Our research results are consistent with the studies by (Yidong and Xinxi, 2013;Caniago and Hayati, 2012;Galletta et al., 2011;Zhu et al., 2004;Lazauskaite-Zabielske et al., 2015) that there is positive association between ethical leadership, intrinsic motivation, organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment. When employees are motivated internally they will try to give their best output towards the work and organization, even in some cases when the motivation is at high level they tend to voluntarily help their colleagues, this attitude and environment leads to higher organizational citizenship behavior.
This research provides guidelines to the banking sector practitioners especially in the developing countries context that the leadership of the organization should listen to their employees, to have    considerations for the ethical standards and compel other employees as well to follow standard of ethics, to keep the interest of employees and advocate their justified rights, his/her decisions should be unbiased and set himself as an example for the employees in order to enhance the employees commitment level with the organization. Moreover, the above-mentioned guidelines are also important to develop higher level of organizational citizenship behavior among the employees. Intrinsic motivation of the employees is also important factor in increasing organizational citizenship behavior, the employees with internal motivation will adopt more organizational citizenship behavior as compared to employees with low or no commitment level towards organization. However, in the given scenario, the actins and attitude of the leadership of the organization matters the most, if the leadership follow and compel employees to follow the ethical standards, their employees would be highly committed to the organization and their citizenship behavior tend to be more as compared to non-ethical leadership.
Like other studies, this study has some limitations, the data is cross sectional and sample size respondents belongs only to Lahore, Pakistan. Future studies can find out the impact of extrinsic motivation in the current research model with larger sample size. Moreover, longitudinal study can be carried out whether taking responses after time and time makes the difference in the results.