Do as I Do: The Effect of Teachers’ Ethical Leadership on Business Students’ Academic Citizenship Behaviors

We studied the impact of teachers’ ethical leadership on students’ moral identity and academic citizenship behaviors. Data from 256 student–teacher matching dyads were collected from one of the top 5 Pakistani business schools. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to ensure factorial validity of the measures that were employed, and the hypothesized relationships were tested using structural regression models that utilized structural equation modeling in AMOS with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Based on social learning theory, the results supported the hypothesis that teachers’ ethical leadership had significant direct and indirect positive effects (i.e., through the students’ moral identity) on the students’ academic citizenship behaviors that were directed toward other students and the school. This study contributes to existing literature on ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior by highlighting useful implications of these organization-based constructs in an academic context.