Ethical leadership and its relationship with the organizational commitment of Melli Bank headquarters employees in Tehran

Master's Thesis

Field: Public Administration

Abstract

The present research has examined the relationship between the ethical leadership of managers and the organizational commitment of employees of National Bank Headquarters in Tehran. Ethical leadership has dimensions of moral person and moral manager, and organizational commitment has three dimensions of emotional, continuous and normative commitment.

The statistical sample included 330 people and they were measured by a questionnaire consisting of two sections. In order to measure the research topic, the localized 10-question ethical leadership questionnaire of Brown and his colleagues and the standard 18-question questionnaire of Meier and Allen on the Likert scale were presented in order to collect information among the respondents. Then the data collected after entering the SPSS software program were analyzed by correlation test, comparative tests, independent t, analysis of variance, Friedman and Kalmogorov Smirnov. The results of Spearman's correlation test show that there is a significant and direct relationship between the two variables of ethical leadership and organizational commitment, and also the results of the binomial test indicate that the leadership style in National Bank is consistent with the ethical leadership style and based on the result of the one-sample t test The organizational commitment of its employees is more than the average and the understanding of the moral leadership indicators of managers shows a significant difference between the two groups of married and unmarried employees of the bank.

The analysis of the results of the comparative tests also shows the existence of a significant difference in organizational commitment in gender groups, marital status, education level and service records.

Keywords: ethical leadership, ethical person, ethical manager, organizational commitment, emotional commitment, continuous commitment , normative commitment

Chapter 1: Generalities of the research

Introduction

Today's world is the world of organizations and human resources as the most valuable organizational resources are the focus of organizational approaches and activities and play a fundamental role in enhancing the goals and ideals of the organization. Human resources give meaning and meaning to the organization and provide the grounds for the realization of organizational goals.

One of the indicators that make one organization superior to another organization is having capable and committed human resources. Committed human resources work beyond their job duties and responsibilities and can be an important factor in the success of the organization (Northern Road, 1390: 1).

One of the organizational weaknesses that has attracted the attention of researchers and experts in organizational behavior today is the reduction of organizational commitment. Organizational commitment does not only mean an individual's loyalty to the organization, but it is a continuous process through which the employees of the organization express their interest in the organization, its goals and values ??(Safarnia, 2018: 2). The committed human force sees itself as belonging to the organization, considers the goals of the organization in the direction of its goals and strives to achieve them, becomes dependent on the organization and identifies itself with it, which in addition to its own growth, takes steps towards the progress and greatness of the organization, and in this way, the organization gets closer to its mission and existential philosophy. In this regard, any factor that increases the commitment and belonging of employees to the organization is important and worthy of attention (Tabarsa and Imani Delshad, 2015: 2). One of these factors is leadership, and the CEO's style is considered very important in the level of subordinates' commitment.

The key to the creation and survival of successful organizations in the 21st century is leadership, and it is by strengthening this concept that organizations can cope with a competitive and continuously changing environment (Kater[1], 2016: 243).

Leadership is one of the duties of management. The way of activity or leadership can increase or decrease the commitment of job performance, satisfaction and moral behavior of the subordinates (Rahadari North, 2010: 1).

Ethical leadership has been given great attention during the early years of the third millennium AD in the field of creating a healthy work environment and due to the organizational, group and individual consequences it brings (Golperor et al., 2010: 4).

Although the management style in employees A line and a headquarters are different. Considering the effect that ethical leadership can have on organizational commitment, in this research, the effect of ethical leadership style in management on staff is investigated. Today, this style of management and leadership has attracted the attention of many management science experts, and this research tries to investigate it among staff managers and its relationship with commitment.Today, this style of management and leadership has attracted the attention of many experts in management science, and this research tries to examine it among the headquarters managers and its relationship with the organizational commitment of the staff of the Melli Bank of Iran in Tehran. Also, in this chapter of the research, the researcher briefly and with regard to the topic of the research, stated the main problem of the research and explained and stated the topic, the necessity of conducting the research, the hypotheses of the research, and the basic objectives of the research, and at the end, specialized terms and words are presented.

1-1- Statement of the problem

Ethical leadership [2] during the early years of the 3rd millennium AD in the field of creating a healthy work environment and because of the organizational, group and individual consequences that it brings, has been given great attention (Golperor et al., 2009: 4). In this type of leadership, the moral values ??accepted for everyone, such as justice[3], fairness[4], honesty[5], honesty and integrity[6] are the focus and attention.

A manager or supervisor through displaying the listed principles, in addition to establishing humane and sincere relationships with employees, high humane needs and sincere methods with employees, methods of meeting the humane and legitimate needs of employees and the organization in a targeted society to reach growth horizons and brings together individual and collective excellence. This way of working will undoubtedly lead to more health and safety in the environment of the organization. The theoretical reason why ethical leaders and managers are able to leave such a tremendous impact is primarily related to the presence of social learning processes [7] in the workplace.

Since every manager or supervisor in his work world is closely monitored by employees, it is natural that if he adheres to moral values ??and principles such as impartiality, justice and fairness, he will be chosen as a role model by employees.

On the other hand Ethical managers with their behavior provide a work environment based on peace, security and confidence. This can be well traced through studies in which it is shown that ethical leadership has an effect on the moral identity of employees. Therefore, ethical leadership is able to leave its effects on employees at all levels through processes aimed at creating an ethical environment and role modeling[8] (Golperor et al., 1389: 5). Among the variables that are influenced by ethical leadership, we can mention organizational commitment[9]. Therefore, one of the most important duties of a leader is to have a moral point of view in management. A leader who acts ethically will be extremely successful, and a leader who does not have a moral basis in his behavior and activities will fail (Avi [10], Plansky [11] and Walombwa [12], 2010: 2).  

When followers have moral leaders, they are more satisfied with their leaders and more committed to the organization (Ogunfuora [13], 2009: 23). In organizations, leaders at different levels play an important role in developing and strengthening ethical culture and ethical behaviors. Therefore, it is not surprising that research by researchers on ethical leadership is increasing. According to Brown and his colleagues, ethical leadership has two dimensions: an ethical person and an ethical manager.

Organizational commitment of employees is also a very important issue, especially from the point of view of organization managers, in order to achieve organizational success and excellence. Today, with the increasing speed of change in organizations, managers are looking for ways to increase the organizational commitment of employees in order to achieve a competitive advantage. Organizational commitment is an attitude, a mental state that shows a kind of desire, need and obligation to continue working in an organization. Willingness means heart's desire to continue working in the organization. Need means that he is forced to continue serving in the organization because of the investments he has made in it, and obligation is religion, responsibility and duty that a person has towards the organization and they see themselves obliged to stay in it (Allen and Meyer [14], 1990: 3). The best organizational programs will not achieve results without organizational commitment, while even very simple programs will be very successful with organizational commitment. In order to retain human resources and prevent repeated expenses in the organization and waste of organizational resources, we must give importance to the organizational commitment of employees and stimulate it in order to benefit from the beneficial and miraculous results of organizational commitment in the organization. Allen and Meier have three dimensions for organizational commitment; Emotional commitment [15], normative commitment [16], continuous commitment [17]