TRUST GLUES THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ETHICAL LEADERSHIP OF HEADS AND UNIVERSITY TEACHERS’ MORAL COMPETENCE

Ethical leadership is a pragmatic concept that needs to be explored extensively in today's workplace. Ethical leaders show moral behavior and try to build an ethical and trusted environment in the organizations. This study was planned to determine the relationship between the ethical leadership of heads as perceived by the teachers in universities of the Punjab, trust, and moral competency of the teachers. Specifically, trust as a mediator was examined to know its effect on the association of perceived ethical leadership of heads with employees’ moral competence. The sample of this study was five public sector universities of Punjab. Data were collected from 230 teachers through a questionnaire from different departments of social sciences and sciences faculties. Pearson correlation was applied to find out the relationship among variables, and Process MACRO was used to measure the mediating effect of trust in the relationship between the variables. Results revealed that leaders' ethical behavior was positively related to teachers' trust but not to their moral competence. Ethical leadership of heads was significantly associated with employees' moral competence when mediated by their trust in heads. It was suggested that leaders should articulate a clear vision, explain how to reach it and express trust and confidence in their followers, emphasizing values, especially fairness and justice, to make themselves trustworthy.