Influence of Ethical Leadership on Work Ethics of Public School Teachers in Digos City, Philippines

Abstract

Ethical leadership is widely recognised as an important factor in shaping professional conduct within educational institutions. This study examined the association between ethical leadership and the work ethics of public-school teachers in Digos City. Guided by Bandura's Social Learning Theory (1977), the study assessed teachers' perceptions of ethical leadership in relation to demonstrating integrity, encouraging innovation, and developing others, and determined whether ethical leadership significantly predicted teachers' work ethics. A quantitative descriptive-regression design was employed. Data were gathered from 110 public school teachers selected through purposive and simple random sampling from five large public schools in the Digos City Schools Division. The validated questionnaire showed acceptable reliability, with Cronbach's alpha values ranging from 0.705 to 0.782. Descriptive statistics and simple linear regression were used for data analysis. Results showed that teachers rated both ethical leadership (M = 4.65) and work ethics (M = 4.66) at an extreme level, although the uniformly high scores may indicate a ceiling effect or social desirability bias. Regression analysis confirmed that ethical leadership significantly predicted work ethics (B = .338, β = .403, p < .001), explaining 16.3% of the variance. Social responsibility and community engagement received the highest work ethics rating (M = 4.69), while competence in culturally diverse environments received the lowest rating (M = 4.65). The findings indicate that ethical leadership is associated with stronger professional conduct among public school teachers.