Ethical leadership, good governance and employee commitment: Testing a moderated mediation model in public universities of Ethiopia

This paper uses a survey design based on cross-sectional data from 186 academic staff of four public universities representing four generations of universities in Ethiopia. The study finds that ethical leadership has a positive and significant effect on employee commitment and such relationship is mediated by perceived good governance practices in the public universities. However, there is no moderated mediation effect of university type (generation) affecting the relationship of good governance and employee commitment. The study is quite novel in bringing good governance as a mediator into the relationship between ethical leadership and employee commitment in higher education institutions particularly in the public university context. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.