Does ethical leadership boost nurses' patient-oriented organizational citizenship behaviours? A cross-sectional study.

Aims: To examine the relationships between perceived ethical leadership, perceived interactional justice climate, and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behaviour.

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 behaviour. SPSS version 22 was used to compute means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations. The partial least squares structural equation modelling was chosen to estimate the path coefficients of the relationships.

Results: Relationships among perceived ethical leadership, perceived interactional justice climate, and organizational citizenship behaviours were statistically significant. Perceived interactional justice climate mediated the relationship between perceived ethical leadership and nurses' organizational citizenship behaviours.

Conclusions: Ethical leadership is related to interactional justice climate, which, in turn, increases nurses' organizational citizenship behaviour. Nurse leaders are encouraged to exhibit ethical behaviours 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 programmes.