Ethical Leadership and Staff Job Performance in the Nigerian Tourism Sector

Abstract

This paper examined the relationship between ethical leadership and staff job performance in the Nigerian tourism sector. To achieve this, the study investigated whether the dimensions of ethical leadership (ethical guidance, power sharing, moral perspective and trustworthiness) significantly predict staff task, contextual, and adaptive performance. It adopted the cross-sectional survey research design whereby 1,853 employees were drawn from thirty (30) tourism firms in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and the Taro Yamane formula was used to sample 256 staff. The instrument used for data collection was the questionnaire which was administered on a face-to-face basis, out of which 210 were fully completed and retrieved, representing 82% of the entire copies administered. The data collected were analysed descriptively, while the formulated hypotheses were analysed using the multiple linear regression method. The findings showed that ethical leadership dimensions do not significantly predict task and adaptive performance but have significant predictive power on contextual performance. Based on the findings, the study recommended that management should continually feel the need to uphold an excellent practice of leading their subordinates ethically.