Ethical Leadership and Employee Ethical Behaviour: The Mediating Roles of Ethical Climate and Organizational Identification in a Law Enforcement Institution
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55324/ijoms.v5i10.1311Keywords:
Excellent Service, Boarding Pass, Ticket Discrepancy, Infant and Child Category, Check-inAbstract
Ethical behavior among employees is a critical issue in law enforcement institutions because unethical actions may undermine public trust, institutional legitimacy, and organizational accountability. Despite the implementation of ethical standards and oversight mechanisms, ethical violations remain a persistent challenge, highlighting the need to understand the organizational and individual factors that promote ethical conduct. This study aims to examine the effects of ethical leadership, ethical climate, and organizational identification on employee ethical behavior, while investigating the mediating roles of ethical climate and organizational identification. This research employed a quantitative explanatory approach involving 234 employees of an Indonesian law enforcement institution selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected using a five-point Likert scale questionnaire and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4. The results demonstrate that ethical leadership, ethical climate, and organizational identification have positive and significant effects on employee ethical behavior. Furthermore, ethical leadership significantly influences ethical climate and organizational identification, while ethical climate also strengthens organizational identification. The mediation analysis confirms that ethical climate and organizational identification significantly mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and employee ethical behavior. These findings highlight that ethical behavior is shaped not only by individual awareness but also by ethical organizational systems and employees’ psychological attachment to institutional values. This study contributes to the ethical behavior literature by providing empirical evidence from a law enforcement context and offers practical implications for strengthening integrity-based leadership and organizational ethics.
References
Ali, M. 2018. “Social Accountability and Institutional Change: The Case of Citizen Oversight of Police.” Public Administration Review.
Ali, M. (2018). Social accountability and institutional change: The case of citizen oversight of police. Public Administration Review.
Al Halbusi, H., Alhaidan, H., Ramayah, T., & AlAbri, S. (2023). Ethical leadership and employees’ ethical behavior: Modeling the contingent role of moral identity. Business and Professional Ethics Journal, 42(1), 1–31.
Al Halbusi, H., Ruiz-Palomino, P., & Williams, K. A. (2023). Ethical leadership, subordinates’ moral identity and self-control: Two- and three-way interaction effect on subordinates’ ethical behavior. Journal of Business Research, 165, Article 114044. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114044
Al Halbusi, H., Ruiz-Palomino, P., Morales-Sánchez, R., Muniem, A., Fattah, F. A. M. A., et al. (2021). Managerial ethical leadership, ethical climate and employee ethical behavior: Does moral attentiveness matter? Ethics & Behavior, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2021.1937628
Al Halbusi, H., Williams, K. A., Ramayah, T., Aldieri, L., & Vinci, C. P. (2021). Linking ethical leadership and ethical climate to employees’ ethical behavior: The moderating role of person–organization fit. Personnel Review, 50(1), 159–185. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-09-2019-0522
Antikorupsi.org. (2022). Pimpinan KPK dan pelanggaran-pelanggarannya: Lili Pintauli hanya menjadi beban KPK. https://antikorupsi.org/id/pimpinan-kpk-dan-pelanggaran-pelanggarannya-lili-pintauli-hanya-menjadi-beban-kpk
BBC News Indonesia. (2021). Mantan jaksa Pinangki divonis 10 tahun penjara, terbukti terima suap Rp7 miliar dan lakukan pemufakatan jahat untuk bebaskan Djoko Tjandra. https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/indonesia-54231689
Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002
Cullen, J. B., Victor, B., & Stephens, C. (1989). An ethical weather report: Assessing the organization’s ethical climate. Organizational Dynamics, 18(2), 50–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/0090-2616(89)90042-9
Farooq, D., Sanjrani, H. A., Vasty, S. B., & Neelam, K. (2022). The relationship between organizational identification and whistleblowing: Moderating roles of perceived ethical climate and proactive personality, 17(2).
Firmansyah, D., & Rachmawati, R. (2025). Does ethical leadership matter in Indonesia’s public sector? The mediating role of ethical climate. Indonesian Interdisciplinary Journal of Sharia Economics (IIJSE), 8(3), 11631–11645.
Guerrero-Dib, J. G., & Portales, L. (2020). Impact of academic integrity on workplace ethical behaviour.
Halbusi, H. Al, Ismail, M. N., & Omar, S. B. (2021). Ethical leadership and employee ethical behavior: Exploring dual-mediation paths of ethical climate and organizational justice: Empirical study on Iraqi organizations. International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 1(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBGE.2020.10028180
Hukumonline. (2022). 3 bukti obstruction of justice yang jerat Ferdy Sambo CS. https://www.hukumonline.com/berita/a/3-bukti-obstruction-of-justice-yang-jerat-ferdy-sambo-cs-lt634e09cc30350/
Kompas. (2023). Daftar pelanggaran etik yang bikin Firli Bahuri didesak mundur dari Ketua KPK.
Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi. (2025). Laporan Survei Penilaian Integritas 2024.
Lee, S., Joo, J. J., Kwon, H. R., Lee, J. S., & Rodriguez, J. J. (2022). (Un)ethical behaviors of police officers in South Korea: A structural equation analysis. Policing, 45(2), 282–297. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-07-2021-0092
Lorenz, T. (2025). Ethical leadership: A multi-stage mediation model of value congruence and organizational identification on employee engagement. Administrative Sciences, 15(9). https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci15090329
Mael, F., & Ashforth, B. E. (1989). Social identity theory and the organization. Academy of Management Review, 14(1), 20–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/258189
Mael, F., & Ashforth, B. E. (1992). Alumni and their alma mater: A partial test of the reformulated model of organizational identification. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13(2), 103–123. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.4030130202
Mehra, H., & Narwal, M. (2025). Impact of ethical leadership on employees’ ethical behavior: Mediation of ethical climate using PLS-SEM. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOES-08-2024-0267
Meyer-Sahling, J. H., Mikkelsen, K. S., & Schuster, C. (2019). The causal effect of public service motivation on ethical behavior in the public sector: Evidence from a large-scale survey experiment. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 29(3), 445–459. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muy071
Transparency International Indonesia. (2026). Corruption Perceptions Index. https://ti.or.id/corruption-perceptions-index/
Treviño, L. K. (1986). Ethical decision making in organizations: A person-situation interactionist model. Academy of Management Review, 11(3), 601–617.
Treviño, L. K., & Youngblood, S. A. (1990). Bad apples in bad barrels: A causal analysis of ethical decision-making behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(4), 378–385.
van der Meer, J., Vermeeren, B., & Steijn, B. (2024). Why do role perceptions matter? A qualitative study on role conflicts and the coping behavior of Dutch municipal enforcement officers. Urban Affairs Review, 60(2), 640–673.
Victor, B., & Cullen, J. B. (1988). The organizational bases of ethical work climates. Administrative Science Quarterly, 33(1), 101–125.
Yang, M., Trong, T., & Hoang, G. (2023). Can ethical climate and ethical self-efficacy channel ethical leadership into service performance? A multilevel investigation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 114, Article 103548. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2023.103548
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Retno Savitri, Corry Yohana, Christian Wiradendi Wolor
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-SA). that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
