Ethical Leadership Behaviour and Quality of Worklife among Professional Telecoms Service Providers Employees: The Mediating Impact of Sustainable Work Environment

Abstract

Ethical leadership behaviour plays  a cogent role in strengthening high quality worklife and sustainable workplace. This study investigates ethical leadership behaviour and employee quality worklife, a role of sustainable work environment on employees of telecoms industry in Nigeria.  This research employed a longitudinal research design to explore the participants of the study, conducting over three months on three intervals. It administers the study instrument on 405 participants across four telecoms organisations in Nigeria. A simple random sampling techniquewas utilised to examine the study respondents, and adapted several existing scales as research instrument. A partial least square structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was utilised to analyse the obtained data from the study participants The findings of this study demonstrated a mixed report from the study population. It indicated that ethical leadership behaviour holds way in Nigeria’s telecoms industry. However, some elements of ethical leadership practices finds negative significant impact with quality of workife. One of the dimensions of ethical leadership behaviour observed, people-oriented behaviour has a negative significant impact on quality of worklife among the employees in Nigeria telecoms industry. While other dimensions indicate that ethical leadership is key to promoting integrity, trust, transparency and ethical practices in corporate organisations today. The outcome of the study illustrated that fairness, transparency, integrity/ethical behaviour and ethical awareness influence and impact quality of worklife of employees. The study concluded that organisations should lead with humanity, and make ethics an important aspect of performance evaluation, and reward ethical behaviour.  This study has provided a natural means to acknowledge that ethical practices is germane to establish an enduring quality of worklife as well as sustainable workplace in corporate ecosystem. It has transformed the notion that unethical practices may be brandished by management of organisations which always push them into public scandals.