The Effect of Ethical Leadership on Work Engagement of Physical Education Teachers with the Mediating Role of Organizational Virtue

The present study aimed to examine the effect of ethical leadership on the work engagement of physical education teachers, with organizational virtue as a mediating role. Considering its purpose, the study was applied; in terms of time, it was cross-sectional and classified as quantitative research. The statistical population consisted of physical education teachers in Mashhad. To determine the sample size, G*Power software was used, and using convenience sampling, 200 participants were selected. The research instruments included three standardized questionnaires: Organizational Virtue by Cameron et al . (2004), Work Engagement by Schaufeli et al . (2006), and Ethical Leadership by Brown et al . (2005). The validity of the questionnaires was reviewed and confirmed by several experts, and their reliability was verified through a pilot study among physical education teachers in Mashhad, using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. To test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling was employed, and data analysis was conducted using SPSS version 25 and SmartPLS version 4. The results showed that ethical leadership had a positive effect on teachers’ work engagement and significantly enhanced organizational virtue, which in turn had a positive relationship with employees’ work engagement. Furthermore, organizational virtue acted as a mediator between ethical leadership and work engagement. Therefore, managers should pay special attention to ethical leadership and foster a virtue-oriented environment to enhance employees’ motivation and work engagement, which not only increases teachers’ engagement but also improves overall organizational productivity.