The effect of organizational stress on organizational commitment: The mediating role of ethical leadership

Keeping qualified manpower in the organization has gained great importance in today's business world where globalization is rapidly increasing and technology is developing day by day. Commitment of employees to their organizations plays a major role in achieving the objectives of the organizations. From time to time, employees may encounter stress factors that may adversely affect their commitment to their organization. Leadership approach of managers is one of the important issues affecting employees. In this study, it is aimed to examine the effect of organizational stress factors on organizational commitment and to test the mediating role of ethical leadership. For the purpose of the research, 181 employees working in the informatics sector participated in the application. A questionnaire was applied to the participants about organizational commitment, organizational stress and ethical leadership and the collected data were analyzed for the purpose of the research. Descriptive statistics, validity and reliability analysis, structure validity analysis, pearson correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and sobel test were performed. As a result of the analyzes, it was found that there is a negative relationship between ethical leadership and organizational stress; a positive relationship between ethical leadership and organizational commitment and a negative relationship between organizational commitment and organizational stress. Moreover, it was determined that ethical leadership had a mediating role in the effect of organizational stress on the organizational commitment levels of the employees and it was determined that this mediation was significant with Sobel test. Key Words: Organizational Commitment, Organizational Stress, Ethical Leadership