How Ethical Leadership Shapes Employees' Readiness to Change

All variables in this study used a five-point Likert response format (1 = "strongly disagree," 7 = "strongly agree").

Ethical Leadership

Kalshoven et al. psychometrically robust 38-item scale was used to measure the ethical leadership of middle–lower managers, specifically the various ethical leader behaviors that comprise this scale, namely, people orientation (seven items), power sharing (six items), fairness (six items), concern for sustainability (three items), ethical guidance (seven items), role clarification (five items), and integrity (four items). This scale was used here over other options because it identifies the totality of the dimensions that form this phenomenon properly. Furthermore, this scale is suitable in this study for noting specific behavioral dimensions that favor readiness to change among employees. For example, its role clarification and power sharing behavioral dimensions are suggested to help employees to feel they can count on the information they may need at any time and they are self-efficacious, respectively.

In line with Kalshoven et al., and after reverse items had been reverse scored properly, these behaviors were combined into an overall score. Due to low loadings, nine items were dropped: two from people orientation ("sympathizes with me when I have problems," "cares about his/her followers"), two from fairness ("holds me responsible for things that are not my fault, manipulates subordinates"), one from concern for sustainability ("stimulates recycling of items and materials in our department"), two from ethical guidance ("clearly explains integrity-related codes of conduct," "clarifies the likely consequences of possible unethical behavior by myself and my colleagues"), one from role clarification ("explains what is expected of me and my colleagues"), and one from integrity ("can be relied on to honor his/her commitments"). The scale used a Likert response format (1 = "strongly disagree," 5 = "strongly agree"). The responses were averaged for each respondent such that higher scores indicated a stronger ethical leadership. Sample items used are "can be trusted to do the thing(s) he/she say(s) he will do" and "shows concern for sustainability issues". The overall ethical leadership scale for the remaining 29 items (9 items were dropped because of low loadings) had a Cronbach's alpha of 0.90.

Organizational Culture of Effectiveness

To assess organizational culture of effectiveness, a selection of items from Sashkin and Rosenbach's scale based on Sashkin's previous research was used. This scale measures the different aspects that an organizational culture of effectiveness must include to promote organizational effectiveness (i.e., change management, goal achievement, coordinated teamwork, shared values and beliefs, and customer orientation). Our choice of this scale rested upon the high potential of most of these aspects to favor an environment which is supportive of readiness to change. In effect, an emphasis on customer orientation and change management is likely to favor that employees become more adapted to customer needs or any organizational change that can occur. In addition, by emphasizing goal achievement, achievement orientation is favored, so willingness to learn new skills and become prepared for any emerging change may arise. Finally, when teamwork is encouraged, employees may feel they have enough support to cope and adapt to any change.

In this study, three items from each dimension were selected for measuring this variable, and respondents had to indicate the extent to which each one was present in their organizations. The scale used a Likert response format (1 = "strongly disagree," 5 = "strongly agree"), and the responses for each respondent were averaged. Because some items were reverse worded, we reverse coded these items, so that the direction of the revealed relationships could reflect the wording of the hypotheses. Thus, higher scores indicated a stronger organizational culture of effectiveness. The scale's alpha reliability was 0.88.

Employee Readiness to Change

Drawing on the Change Readiness Survey, a selection of three adapted items was used. While other scales are available, we used this scale, and in particular, three items, because these reflected the motivation and attitudes of the participants to engage with the change and make it work, thus capturing the readiness to change conception properly. In addition, the instructions this survey provides to participants before responding the items allow them to put themselves in context, which can help to gauge this variable in a reliable manner. In particular, participants were asked to think about how their current organization typically plans for and implements workplace changes and with this "change history" in mind, they were asked to indicate their level of agreement about how they had faced such changes in the past, using a Likert response format (1 = "strongly disagree," 5 = "strongly agree"). The responses for each respondent were averaged such that higher scores indicated a stronger employee readiness to change. A sample item was "when I am affected by organizational change, I am involved in identifying possible obstacles". The scale's alpha reliability was 0.72.

Control Variables

The results were controlled for age, tenure in the job, gender, and education, all of which can potentially relate to organizational behavior, and specifically to employees' readiness to change. For example, although findings are mixed regarding age, this demographic factor is suggested to affect readiness to change negatively; older employees are associated with stability and a lower potential for learning new skills, which should lead them to a stronger psychological inability to accepting radical change. As with age, tenure in the job is expected to affect readiness to change negatively; with increasing tenure in the job, the employees will show little contact with other work situations, therefore increasing their levels of cognitive rigidity and aversion to change. Regarding the effect of gender a number of studies show no relationship; however, females are seen as more risk-averse, and more apprehensive toward any change, which should lead to lower levels of readiness to change. Finally, because the level of education is linked to seeing the change as something which is necessary and beneficial, this variable should relate positively to readiness to change, in line with previous findings. While age and education mimicked continuous variables, a dummy coded variable was created for gender (0 = male, 1 = female). For age and level of education, an interval scale anchored at 1 (younger/lower educated employees) and 5 (older/higher educated employees) was used; for years of experience in the job, the interval scale ranged between 1 (<5 years) and 3 (>10 years).