How does ethical leadership influence nurses’ job performance? Learning goal orientation as a mediator and co-worker support as a moderator

Background: Ethical nurse leaders play a pivotal role in helping their nurse employees deliver high-quality healthcare services. However, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the mediating and moderating mechanisms by which ethical leadership improves job performance. Purpose: This study aims to investigate: (1) whether ethical leadership would enhance nurses’ job performance; (2) whether learning goal orientation acts as a mediator; and (3) whether co-worker support operates as a moderator. Participants and research context: We collected two-wave data from 218 nurses working in hospitals located in Jiangsu, China. Research design: A time-lagged study based on an online survey design was utilized for data collection between September 2022 and January 2023. PROCESS Model 5 was employed to test the research hypotheses. Ethical considerations: We obtained ethics approval from the University Ethics Committee. The nursing participants were assured that their survey responses were completely anonymous. Results and discussion: Ethical leadership is not significantly correlated with job performance. However, ethical leadership has an indirect impact on nurses’ job performance through the mediator (learning goal orientation). Moreover, co-worker support moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and job performance. Conclusion: The conceptual model provides us with a fine-grained understanding of the relationship between ethical leadership and nurses’ job performance. We highlight the mediating role of learning goal orientation and the moderating role of co-worker support. We suggest that healthcare organizations should devote more efforts to promoting ethical leadership, co-worker support, and learning goal orientation.