The mediating role of work commitment in the effects of ethical leadership on service innovation behavior and intrapreneurship: a case of chambers of commerce and industry in Turkey

The main purpose of this study which examines how it can be more effective in terms of organizational and managerial aspects with chambers of commerce and industry connected to The Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey is to analyze the relationships between ethical leadership, work engagement, intrapreneurship and service innovation behavior. In addition, it is to determine the role of mediation of work engagement effecting on intrapreneurship and service innovation behavior. For this purpose, mixed research method which includes quantitative and qualitative analysis methods has been adopted. Qualitative data were analyzed by interpretive phenomenological research method. The data collected from 568 employees who were employed in chambers of commerce and industry operating in Turkey was analyzed. For the validity and reliability of the measurement tools, confirmatory factor analysis, the model's good fit values and the AMOS Structural Equation Model were used. It was found that ethical leadership had statistically significant effect on employee engagement, intrapreneurship and the subscales of service innovation behavior (employee service innovation behavior and new service development). The results showed that work engagement partially mediated with ethical leadership effecting on intrapreneurship, ethical leadership effecting on the subscales of service innovation behavior. The qualitative analysis revealed that the most important results of chambers of commerce and industry in Turkey were the necessity of ensuring the managers to be fair, providing institutionalization of the chambers, establishment of human resources management system. It is thought that the study is important in terms of providing empirical contributions to the ethical leadership, service innovation, intrapreneurship and work commitment literature. Finally, there are some limitations of the study and some suggestions are offered for future studies.