Leader Integrity: A Predictor of Organizational Citizenship Behaviour and Counterproductive Work Behaviour among Ghanaian Civil Servants

Abstract

The concept of leader integrity has become topical as part of the call for positive organizational research. In an attempt to explore the meaning of this character strength in leaders and how it influences employee outcomes, this study employed the use of robust methodology to examine how leader integrity predicts the citizenship behaviour and counterproductive work behaviour of civil servants in Ghana. The concurrent embedded mixed method design was adopted to subjectively provide a contextual understanding of leader integrity and its relationship with employee voluntary behaviours using a total sample of 143 respondents; 135 workers and 8 directors. A thematic content analysis of the response of the directors revealed that leader integrity in the Ghanaian context was understood as both morality as prescribed by the Ghanaian culture and the consistency between values and actions. Correlation and regression analysis of the relationship between three variables revealed that the leader integrity had a significant positive relationship with the citizenship behaviour of employees though it accounted for a small percentage of its variation but had no significant relationship with unproductive employee behaviours. It was also found that employees who engaged in more citizenship behaviours had a less likelihood to engage in counterproductive behaviours at the workplace. It was therefore recommended from the findings of this study that codes of conduct for workers in the Ghanaian context must reflect the societal norms prevalent in the country. Also, it was recommended that leaders in organizations demonstrate more integrity at the workplace in order to influence positive outcomes from employees. The major contribution of this study to research is about the contextual meaning of leader integrity in the African context, particularly in Ghana. The study also serves as a nuanced supplement to recent studies on character strengths and their impact on employee outcomes.