Effect of Ethical Leadership on Burnout: Differences of Perceptions Among Public and Private Sector Employees

Abstract

This research intends to examine the effects of the ethical leadership on burnout behavior along with the perception differences of the private and public sector employees. For this purpose, a survey has been applied to 2366 employees in total, which consist of different sectors such as finance, automotive, service, food, tourism and public services in the cities of ?stanbul and Kocaeli. According to the results, two dimensions of the ethical leadership have significant meaningful effect on emotional exhaustion. Whilst injustice as a dimension of the ethical leadership has a positive effect on emotional exhaustion, ethical guidance is in the contrary direction. There is no influence of the role clarification dimension on Emotional Exhaustion. The negative effect of all sub dimensions of the ethical leadership has been found on depersonalization sub-dimension. While the ethical leadership and role clarification are affecting the depersonalization in negative way, injustice is affecting the depersonalization in positive direction. Based on the T-Tests results, which was applied to understand the perception differences, public sector employees perceive their leaders as more injustice and they feel more burnout than the employess in private sector. In reverse, public sector employees perceive their leaders much more ethical guide and they think that their leaders pay much attention on defining their subordinates roles and responsibilities. There is no significant result between two sectors on depersonalization.The literature presents lack of evidence on effects of ethical ladership on burnout behavior. In this respect, this study intends to be a pioneer in providing contribution to the academic literature.