Organizational ethics and teachers' intent to leave: An integrative approach

Purpose: The present study focuses on developing a conceptual framework that explores the relationships between teachers' intent to leave and a spectrum of ethics perceptions. The authors argue that these relationships are mediated by organizational commitment (affective and normative). Research Design: Organizational ethics was measured by teachers' perceptions of ethical climate (caring and formal), organizational justice (distributive and procedural), and tendency to misbehave. Participants were 1,016 schoolteachers from 35 schools affiliated with a secondary-level school network in Israel. Findings: Results of a multilevel analysis reveal direct relationships between intent to leave and dimensions of all three ethical constructs. The mediation effect of affective and normative commitment was full for caring climate and partial for procedural justice and tendency to misbehave. Conclusions: The contribution of this study is the integrative approach to organizational ethics as predicting teachers' intent to leave, an approach rarely taken in previous research. The results may have implications for educational policies that focus on improving ethical perceptions while containing teachers' voluntary turnover.