Abstract

This study empirically examines follower gender as a crucial moderator connecting ethical leadership (EL) to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and, subsequently, to department performance. We analyzed survey data from 485 employees in Chinese SMEs using AMOS 18.0 and SPSS 18.0 to investigate both mediating and moderating effects, thus clarifying how EL influences performance. The results indicate that EL enhances department performance through OCB, with a stronger EL-OCB relationship observed among female followers compared to male followers. These findings provide practical guidance: promote ethical role modeling and procedural justice to encourage OCB, implement transparent decision-making and fair recognition to strengthen prosocial behavior, and customize communication, feedback, and recognition strategies in gender-responsive ways to optimize OCB’s impact on performance. By moving beyond a leader-centric perspective to consider follower characteristics, this study delineates when and how EL translates into unit-level performance via OCB.