The mediating role of administrative empowerment in the relationship between ethical leadership and job performance in public joint-stock companies

This study aims to investigate the mediating role of administrative empowerment in the relationship between ethical leadership and job performance within Yemeni public joint-stock companies, which play a vital role in supporting the national economy. Employing a descriptive quantitative approach, the research utilized Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze data from 433 employees across eight companies. The measurement model demonstrated strong psychometric properties, with outer loadings ≥ 0.70, composite reliability ≥ 0.86, and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) ≥ 0.56. The structural model revealed a significant impact of ethical leadership on administrative empowerment (β = 0.83) and of administrative empowerment on job performance (β = 0.86), while no direct effect was found between ethical leadership and job performance (β = 0.070). However, administrative empowerment showed a strong mediating effect (β = 0.717), explaining 69% of the variance in administrative empowerment and 85% in job performance, indicating high predictive power. The findings underscore the importance of administrative empowerment as a mechanism through which ethical leadership enhances job performance, offering a practical framework for evaluating and improving performance in Yemen’s public companies.