Work Engagement as an Outcome of Ethical Leadership and Team Trust

Employee engagement is a current focus among organizations (Kappel, 2018). I examined the relationships between ethical leadership, team trust, and work engagement, using conservation of resources theory and social exchange theory as a basis. I proposed that ethical leadership has a positive relationship with work engagement, as ethical leaders provide followers with resources in the form of favorable treatment and clear ethical guidelines. I suggest that this relationship is partially mediated by team trust, which is a result of the social exchange relationship between ethical leader and follower. Team trust provides resources for workers due to the psychological benefit of perceived security in one’s team, which is then invested in the form of work engagement. Additionally, I argued that conscientiousness is a moderator, and that those high in conscientiousness will have a stronger relationship between the study variables, due to their likely higher valuation of ethics and trust in their team.