A social exchange perspective on why and when ethical leadership foster customer-oriented citizenship behavior

Grounded in social exchange theory, we investigated why and when ethical leadership may relate to hospitality employees' customer-oriented citizenship behavior (CCB) by exploring the mediating and moderating roles of felt obligation and psychological detachment from an organization respectively. Using a two-wave sample of 152 employees and their 152 coworkers from 10 hotels in Africa, we found that ethical leadership positively relates to CCB via increased felt obligation. In addition, our results revealed that psychological detachment moderated the ethical leadership and CCB relationship, such that this relationship was stronger when psychological detachment was low (versus high), as mediated by felt obligation.