Ethical Leadership and Normative Commitment: Drivers of Urban Land Service Quality in Bahir Dar City-Ethiopia

Belay Sintie, Matebe Tafere Gedifew — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Urban land service delivery is becoming a keen source of public discontent in developing countries despite that it is the driving engine of the urban economy. This study aims at examining the influence of ethical leadership on the perceived quality of urban land service through the link of normative organizational commitment in Bahir Dar City. Participants of the study were urban land customers. Perceived Leader Integrity Scale was employed to measure ethical leadership. Normative commitment was measured using the Meyer and colleagues tool. Perceived service quality was measured employing the service quality scale, excluding customer expectations. Data were explored from convenience sample involving 346 customers. SEM-AMOS software was used to carry out the analysis. Findings indicated that ethical leadership has significant and positive influence on the Perceived service quality (β=0.476, R²=0.227) and the Employees’ normative commitment (β=0.499,R= 0.249), partially mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and the perceived service quality (β=0.391, R²=0.15). The indirect effect (β=0.195, R²=0.038) supports the strong direct effect, yielding a total impact of β=0.671 (R²=0.450). This implies that appropriate ethical leadership practices contribute to improve urban land service quality. The study suggests that urban land administration organizations need to adopt ethical leadership and normative commitment practices to improve the ever-increasing challenges of urban land services in the study area.

Key words: Ethical leadership, Perceived Service Quality, Normative Commitment, Structural Equation Modelling, Ethiopia

African Journal of Leadership and Development

Ethical Leadership and Normative Commitment: Drivers of Urban Land Service Quality in Bahir Dar City-Ethiopia