Responsible Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Higher education The Roles of Organizational Identification and Psychological Empowerment

Abstract

In the increasingly competitive higher education sector, the extra-role, discretionary efforts of academic staff are critical for institutional success. This study investigates the mechanisms by which responsible leadership influences organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), specifically examining the mediating role of organizational identification and the moderating role of psychological empowerment in this relationship.  A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was used. Data was collected through self-administered questionnaires from a purposive and convenience sample of 281 academic staff members working across selected private universities in Iraq. Following a rigorous expert validation and a pilot study, the primary data was analyzed via Variance-based Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS software to assess the measurement and structural models. The empirical results revealed that responsible leadership has a significant positive direct impact on OCB. Furthermore, organizational identification mediates this relationship, serving as the psychological link between ethical leadership and voluntary citizenship behaviors. Crucially, the structural analysis revealed a significant negative moderating effect of psychological empowerment on the relationship between responsible leadership and organizational identification (β = −0.229). This indicates a substitution effect, wherein highly empowered faculty members rely less on external leadership to forge their institutional identification, whereas disempowered staff are highly dependent on responsible leadership.