The effect of perceived managerial character strengths on employees' attitudes towards work

Effective and positive leadership practices are needed more and more in today's business world. It is seen that organizations should adopt effective leadership practices in order to increase their psychological well-being, performance and job satisfaction levels of their employees, which are at the forefront of the elements they need to achieve their goals. One of the effective leadership approaches is virtuous leadership. Psychological wellbeing of people is an intermediary factor that has an effect on increasing performance and job satisfaction. If the leaders give importance to the expectations, needs and demands of their employees and behave in a way that supports their development, they will successfully achieve their desired corporate goals. One of the most important problems faced by the management world is to do business with unsatisfied and absent employees, who are low-performing, have a low level of satisfaction, are not committed to their jobs, and therefore always have the intention of leaving the job. An important factor in the elimination of pathologies in this organizational context is the virtues of managers and their virtuous behaviors. The subject of virtues, which is investigated under the positive psychology approach, is attracting more and more attention. Because of the constructive and expanding effect of positive emotions, organizations encourage the display of positive behaviors in the context of leadership. Based on these issues, this study aims to examine the relationship between virtuous leadership perception and employee performance, job satisfaction and psychological well-being. In addition, the mediating role of psychological well-being in the effect of virtuous leadership on performance and job satisfaction was also examined. In the study designed with these aims, answers were sought to the questions of why virtuous leadership is important, why it should be popularized, how much it affects the performance, psychological well-being and satisfaction levels of employees. In the study carried out within the scope of quantitative research, data were collected with a questionnaire. Questionnaire forms consist of five parts. The scales in the questionnaire are Demographic Characteristics, Virtuous Leadership Scale, Psychological Well-Being Scale, Job Satisfaction Scale and Employee Performance Scale, respectively. In the study, a survey was conducted on 478 employees of a largescale enterprise operating in the iron and steel sector in Karabuk, which were selected by easy sampling. Within the scope of the study, validity, reliability, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyzes were performed for the analysis of the data. In addition, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis for the direction of the relationship between variables and structural equation model analysis were performed. AMOS and SPSS statistical programs were used within the scope of the research. According to the research findings, virtuous leadership dimensions positively affect employees' psychological wellbeing, job satisfaction and performance. It has also been found that psychological wellbeing plays a mediating role between these variables. According to the results of the research, it is revealed that the employees of the organizations can reach efficiency and productivity under the virtuous leadership management. Key Words: Positive Psychology, Virtuous Leadership, Psycological Wellbeing, Work Satisafaction, Performance