Ethical leadership, internal job satisfaction and OCB: the moderating role of leader empathy in emerging industries

Emerging industries are central to China’s social development but face challenges such as rapid technological change, competition, and aggressive cultures, contributing to high turnover among technical personnel. Ethical leadership (EL)—leadership grounded in moral beliefs and values, enacted through honesty, fairness, and trustworthiness—has been shown to enhance positive employee outcomes including job satisfaction, engagement, productivity, and OCB. Job satisfaction includes intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic components; internal job satisfaction (IJS) reflects fulfillment of psychological needs such as personal development, meaning, and contribution. Prior research often treats job satisfaction as a unitary construct and focuses on direct links between leadership and behavior, leaving a gap regarding intrinsic job satisfaction and spontaneous OCB. This study addresses this gap by examining how EL relates to OCB via IJS, and how leader empathy (LE)—leaders’ understanding and supportive responses to subordinates—moderates these relationships. Grounded in self-determination theory (SDT) and emotional contagion theory (ECT), the study focuses on R&D personnel in China’s emerging industries and tests whether IJS mediates the EL–OCB link and whether LE moderates the IJS–OCB relationship.

The study builds on SDT, which differentiates intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations and posits that fulfillment of intrinsic needs promotes autonomous, prosocial behaviors, and on ECT, which explains how leaders’ emotions can spread within groups to shape followers’ attitudes and behaviors. EL entails honest, fair, and considerate behavior that models moral standards and reinforces ethical conduct, aligning organizational practices with employees’ value-driven goals. Through self-examination processes, when employees perceive leadership practices as moral and supportive, they are more likely to enact OCB. ECT suggests leaders’ emotions and empathetic behaviors can serve as affective resources that influence follower outcomes. Based on this framework, the study advances four hypotheses: H1: EL is positively associated with IJS. H2: IJS is positively associated with OCB. H3: IJS mediates the relationship between EL and OCB. H4: LE moderates the effect of IJS on OCB.

Design and sampling: A purposive sampling method followed by snowball sampling was used to recruit R&D, experiment, and acceptance department employees from companies in biopharmaceuticals, new energy vehicles, and high-end equipment manufacturing—representative of China’s emerging industries. Data collection proceeded in two waves to reduce common method bias (CMB). Wave 1 (Aug–Sep 2022) gathered demographics (gender, age, education, tenure, post) and measures of EL and IJS from 421 respondents. Wave 2 (Nov 1–Dec 2, 2022) collected LE and OCB via online questionnaires; 332 responded to Wave 2, 71% of whom had participated in Wave 1. After removing repeats and partial responses, 248 valid paired cases remained. Sample characteristics: 64.5% female; age mainly post-80s (54.8%) and post-90s (43.5%); education: 50% bachelor’s, 48.4% advanced degrees; tenure mostly >3 and <10 years (46.8%); roles: 64.5% non-supervisory, 35.5% supervisory. Measures: All scales used seven-point Likert anchors (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). EL was adapted from Steinmann et al. (2016) with items reflecting concern, fairness, and integrity (α = 0.969). IJS used the five-item Intrinsic Job Value Scale (Furnham et al., 2021) with contextual adaptations. LE used a four-item scale (Mahsud et al., 2010) assessing awareness of subordinates’ feelings (α = 0.934; CR = 0.953; AVE = 0.836). OCB was measured using items from Lee and Allen (2002). Measurement properties reported strong reliability and validity. Procedure to mitigate CMB: Anonymity assurances, two-wave design, Harman’s single-factor test (largest factor = 39.554% < 50%), and ULMC approach in PLS-SEM. Average substantive variance = 0.691; method-based variance = 0.022; ratio ~31:1, indicating minimal CMB. Analysis: Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) assessed measurement and structural models (SmartPLS). Bootstrapping (5,000 resamples) estimated path coefficients. Moderation was tested with Hayes’ PROCESS macro (Model 1). Multicollinearity was checked via VIF (1.0–4.433 < 5 threshold). Model fit indices included R^2, Q^2, and SRMR. Measurement model: Convergent validity met (Cronbach’s α > 0.7; CR > 0.6; AVE > 0.5). Discriminant validity supported via Fornell–Larcker and HTMT (HTMT < 0.85). Structural model fit: R^2 = 0.668 (IJS), 0.818 (OCB); Q^2 = 0.491 (IJS), 0.636 (OCB); SRMR = 0.072 (< 0.08).

- Descriptives and correlations: EL correlated positively with IJS (r = 0.706, p < 0.001) and OCB (r = 0.644, p < 0.001); IJS correlated with OCB (r = 0.625, p < 0.001). VIFs ranged 1–4.433, indicating acceptable multicollinearity. - Hypothesis tests (PLS-SEM): H1 supported: EL → IJS β = 0.818, t = 23.981, p < 0.001. H2 supported: IJS → OCB β = 0.320, t = 3.226, p = 0.001. - Mediation (H3): The study concludes IJS positively mediates the EL → OCB relationship. Reported indirect effects include a significant indirect path (e.g., indirect effect ≈ 0.234, p = 0.004), with total effect on OCB significant (β ≈ 0.431, p = 0.032). - Moderation (H4; PROCESS Model 1): The interaction IJS × LE significantly predicted OCB with a negative coefficient (β = −0.128, t = −2.503, p = 0.014), R^2 = 0.808. LE thus moderates the IJS–OCB link, attenuating the positive effect of IJS on OCB at higher levels of LE. - Measurement quality: High reliability across constructs (e.g., EL α = 0.969; LE CR = 0.953, AVE = 0.836; OCB CR = 0.969, AVE = 0.795). Model predictive relevance supported (Q^2 > 0).

Findings address the central question of how ethical leadership influences OCB among R&D staff in emerging industries, through intrinsic job satisfaction and in the presence of leader empathy. EL fosters IJS by signaling fairness, integrity, and concern, aligning with SDT’s premise that satisfying intrinsic needs promotes autonomous, prosocial behaviors such as OCB. IJS, reflecting fulfillment of internal values and meaning at work, transmits EL’s effects to OCB, clarifying a psychological pathway that goes beyond transactional reciprocity models. The moderating analysis reveals that while empathy is often viewed as beneficial, higher leader empathy can attenuate the positive IJS–OCB linkage in this technical R&D context, consistent with a more cognitively framed empathy that prioritizes professional judgments and organizational interests. Practically, this suggests that ethical climates emphasizing fairness and integrity are pivotal for nurturing intrinsic satisfaction and OCB, while the deployment of empathetic behaviors should be calibrated to context to avoid dampening discretionary contributions. The results underscore the unique dynamics of R&D roles under high-pressure, innovation-driven conditions and refine our understanding of LE’s complex role when coupled with intrinsic motivational processes.

This study demonstrates that ethical leadership enhances internal job satisfaction, which in turn fosters organizational citizenship behavior among R&D employees in China’s emerging industries. By integrating SDT and ECT, it clarifies a psychological mechanism wherein intrinsic value fulfillment mediates the EL–OCB relationship, and it identifies leader empathy as a boundary condition that weakens the positive IJS–OCB link. Contributions include: (1) differentiating intrinsic from extrinsic facets of job satisfaction to explain spontaneous OCB; (2) highlighting LE’s nuanced, potentially attenuating role in OCB emergence; and (3) extending leadership theory by focusing on intrinsic motivational pathways rather than solely exchange-based mechanisms. Future research should broaden industry and cultural settings, explore additional moderators and mediators, and examine alternative outcomes of ethical leadership to build a more comprehensive model of discretionary employee behaviors.

- Generalizability: The sample was limited to R&D, testing, and acceptance departments in biopharma, new energy vehicles, and high-end equipment manufacturing in China; findings may not generalize to all emerging industries or other cultural contexts. - Scope of moderation: Only leader empathy was examined as a moderator of the IJS–OCB relationship; other contextual or leadership variables may also moderate these links. - Outcomes: The study focused on OCB; future work should investigate additional outcomes of ethical leadership and intrinsic satisfaction. - Cultural/contextual variation: Further cross-cultural studies are needed to test the robustness of the proposed mechanisms across different organizational and national contexts.