Ethical Leadership and Perceived Organizational Fairness: A Moderated Mediation Model of Moral Identity and Psychological Contract Breach

Abstract

This study identifies when and how ethical leadership is linked to employees' perceptions of organizational fairness. We propose and test a mechanism in which followers' moral identity explains this link, and the state of the psychological contract sets its boundaries, highlighting a novel, process-focused view of fairness formation. Using a cross-sectional survey of 306 white-collar employees in T & uuml;rkiye's industrial sector, we estimated a moderated-mediation model with partial least squares structural equation modeling and bootstrap inference. Results revealed that ethical leadership related to perceived organizational fairness indirectly through the symbolization (outward expression) facet of moral identity, whereas internalization (inward conviction) was unrelated. This indirect link emerged only when employees perceived that promised obligations were honored, indicating that psychological-contract fulfillment enables ethical signals to be read as fair. The findings clarify that visible moral behavior matters more than inward conviction for fairness judgments and that relational integrity is a precondition for leader influence. We discuss implications for theory and for building fair climates by making ethics visible and keeping promises.