Title: Ethical leadership and team effectiveness: mediating roles of a formal control system and Chinese guanxi

Authors: Changsuk Ko; Junjie Wu; Kihyun C. Park

Addresses: School of Management, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, China ' School of Management, Zhejiang Shuren University, Hangzhou, China ' Department of Management, School of Business, Robert Morris University, Moon, Pennsylvania, USA

Abstract: This study aims to explore how a supervisor's ethical leadership influences employees' team effectiveness through the mechanism of a formal control system and Chinese guanxi. Using survey data collected from Chinese employees (N = 330), this study tests the proposed hypotheses. We found that ethical leadership not only plays a significant role in enhancing employees' team effectiveness directly, but also does so indirectly by promoting formal control system and Chinese guanxi. This study contributes to the study of ethical leadership and extends our understanding of the underlying mechanism that links ethical leadership to team effectiveness in the context of China.

Keywords: ethical leadership; formal control system; Chinese guanxi; team effectiveness; mediating mechanism.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2023.134502

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2023 Vol.31 No.2, pp.221 - 236

Received: 06 Mar 2020
Accepted: 05 Sep 2020
Published online: 26 Oct 2023 *

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