Leadership and Job Demands on Managerial Decision-Making Effectiveness through Emotional Exhaustion in the Aviation Industry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48161/qaj.v5n4a2163Keywords:
ethical leadership; job demand- resource (jd-r) model; emotional exhaustion; effectiveness in decision making; aviation management.Abstract
The aim of the study is to investigate the contribution of ethical leadership and job demands to the development of managerial decision-making effectiveness in the aviation sector, based on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. Although research has been conducted in relation to leadership and stress independently, there is still a need for research to investigate the integration of the two concepts and their resulting influence on managerial decision-making effectiveness in the aviation industry. Job resources are conceptualized as ethical skilled leadership to improve the quality of decisions made, and job demands are defined as stressors that poor decision-making abilities of managers. Emotional exhaustion is found to be the mediate procedure on that such dynamics are operated. The structured survey was conducted among aviation managers and supervisors (N = 232), and the analysis conducted with the help of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using software SmartPLS version 4. The findings shows that ethical leadership has a great and indirect effect on the effectiveness in decision making among managers by reducing the emotional exhaustion. The latter when compared to job demand affect the effectiveness of decision making in the opposite and negative way, and emotional exhaustion is the significant moderator which can explain the effects of stress on performance. These results provide empirical support for the JD-R framework in a safety-sensitive industry and for the two ways in which organizational resources and stressors may affect managerial results. This study extends previous literature by combining ethical leadership and job demands as the key factors explaining the role of psychological resources and stressors in effective decision making in aviation management. Policy implications include leadership development, workload control, and well-being initiatives to protect effective decision-making in aviation organizations.
Downloads
References
Murugan, M., & Prabadevi, M. N. (2025). Emotional intelligence, leadership, governance and management strategy: Key drivers of business sustainability in engineering services. Qubahan Academic Journal, 5(1), 318-333.
Nguyen (2011). On Henry Mintzberg’s Model of Managing, SSRN, pp. 1-16, 1 September.
Klein, D. D. Woods, J. M. Bradshaw, R. R. Hoffman and P. J. Feltovich, (2004). Ten challenges for making automation a “team player” in joint human-agent activity, IEEE Intelligent Systems, vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 91-95.
Brown, L. K. Treviño and D. A. Harrison, (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 117-134.
Guo (2022). The Relationship Between Ethical Leadership and Employee Job Satisfaction: The Mediating Role of Media Richness and Perceived Organizational Transparency, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13:885515.
Olvera, S. Llorens, H. Acosta-Antognoni and M. Salanova, (2025). The Role of Organizational Justice in the Healthcare Context: How to Improve Job Performance through Horizontal Trust and the Resilience of Work Teams, Spanish Journal of Psychology, vol. 28.
Meng and X. Guo (2025). The relationship between ethical leadership, moral sensitivity, and moral courage among head nurses, BMC Nursing, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 1-11.
Rehman, M. Bekmezci, S. Salman and R. S. (2025). Ethical Leadership and Thriving at Work: The Interplay of Psychological Safety and Mental Health in Serial Mediation Model., J.East Eur. Manag. Stud., vol. 30, no. 2, p. 39321.
Zhu, W. Zhi and Y. Fang, (2025). Ethical leadership, organizational learning, and corporate ESG performance: A moderated mediation model, International Review of Economics and Finance, vol. 98.
Bakker and E. Demerouti (2007). The Job Demands‐Resources model: state of the art, Journal of Managerial Psychology, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 309-328.
Christiansen, B. E. Gynning, A. Lashari, J. P. Zuberbühler, G. Johansson and E. Brulin, (2024). Associations between job demand-control-support and high burnout risk among physicians in Sweden: a cross-sectional study., Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 1-10.
Park, L. Konge and A. R. Artino, (2020). The Positivism Paradigm of Research, Academic Medicine, vol. 95, no. 5, p. 690–694.
Sánchez-Álvarez, N. Extremera and P. Fernández-Berrocal, (2016). The relation between emotional intelligence and subjective well-being: A meta-analytic investigation, The Journal of Positive Psychology, vol. 11, no. 3, p. 276–285.
Dlouhy, A. Schmitt and I. J. Kandel, (2024). A Job Demands–Resources Perspective on Emotional Exhaustion and Work Engagement in Human–Animal Work, Occupational Health Science, vol. 8, no. 4, p. 733–761.
Maslach and M. P. Leiter, (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry, World Psychiatry, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 103.
Ordali, P. Marcos-Prieto, G. Avvenuti, E. Ricciardi, L. Boncinelli, P. Pietrini, G. Bernardi and E. Bilancini, (2024). Prolonged exertion of self-control causes increased sleep-like frontal brain activity and changes in aggressivity and punishment, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Tanveer (2025). Leading green with heart and intelligence: Uniting AI, emotional intelligence, and transformational leadership for a sustainable future., Sustainable Futures, vol. 10, pp. 101-137.
Zhai, S. Rehman, A. Addas, Q. Liu, E. Rehman and M. N. Khan, (2025). Emotional labor and empathic concern as predictors of exhaustion and disengagement in college teachers, Scientific Reports, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1-16.
Wolfe (2025). The impact of high-performance work practices on employee burnout experience in UK higher education: a professional services perspective, Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 3-13.
Maier, L. Lawrie, D. Powell, P. Murchie and J. L. Allan, (2025). Lengthy Shifts and Decision Fatigue in Out‐of‐Hours Primary Care: A Qualitative Study, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, vol. 31, no. 2.
Sun, J. Shi and J. Zhang, (2023). From entrepreneurship education to entrepreneurial intention: Mindset, motivation, and prior exposure, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14.
Tanveer (2024). Cracking the code: The influence of personality traits on knowledge management culture and sharing behavior, Uncertain Supply Chain Management, vol. 12, p. 2547–2558.
Dorta-Afonso and L. Romero-Domínguez, (2025). High-performance work systems in job demands-resources theory: Implications for employee burnout and quality of life, International Journal of Hospitality Management, vol. 126.
Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 117-134.
Hasan, A. Thakkar, A. K. Sahoo, W. Goyal, K. Seth, S. S. Jayakumar and S. R. Sikchi, (2024). Leadership and Ethical Decision-Making in Healthcare Management, Health Leadership and Quality of Life, vol. 3.
Zhang, Y., Xiong, P., Zhou, W., Sun, L., & Cheng, E. T. C (2023). Exploring the longitudinal effects of emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence on knowledge management processes, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, vol. 40, no. 4, p. 1555–1578.
Bouzari, M., Safavi, H., & Vatankhah, S. (2020). The impact of ethical leadership on counterproductivity among cabin crews, European Journal of Tourism Research, vol. 25, p. 2507.
Hakimi (2025). Ethical Leadership and Its Role in Organizational Commitment, Business Ethics and Leadership, vol. 9, no. 2, p. 65–82.
Demerouti, A. B. Bakker, F. Nachreiner and W. B. Schaufeli, (2001). The job demands-resources model of burnout, Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 86, no. 3, p. 499–512.
Shah, C. Rose, A. Ibrahim, S. A. R. Khan and M. Tanveer, (2023). A resource and leagile strategy in business operations for performance improvement, Decision Analytics Journal, vol. 7.
Maier, D. Powell, P. Murchie and J. L. Allan, (2025). Systematic review of the effects of decision fatigue in healthcare professionals on medical decision-making, Health Psychology Review.
Zheng, L. A. Witt, E. Waite, E. M. David, M. van Driel, D. P. McDonald, K. R. Callison and L. J. Crepeau, (2015). Effects of ethical leadership on emotional exhaustion in high moral intensity situations, Leadership Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 5, p. 732–748.
Santiago-Torner, M. González-Carrasco and R. A. Miranda Ayala, (2024). Ethical Leadership and Emotional Exhaustion: The Impact of Moral Intensity and Affective Commitment., Administrative Sciences, vol. 14, no. 9, p. 233.
Zhang, H. Huang, S. Zhao, D. Li and H. Du, (2025). Emotional exhaustion and turnover intentions among young ICU nurses: a model based on the job demands-resources theory, BMC Nursing, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 1-11.
Huang, Y., Du, P., Chen, C., Yang, C., & Huang, I. (2011). Mediating effects of emotional exhaustion on the relationship between job demand–control model and mental health, Stress and Health, vol. 27, no. 2.
Salah ud din Khan, M. Salman Chughtai and M. Zhiqiang, (2025). Empowering leadership and occupational burnout: the moderated mediation model., BMC Psychology, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 1–15.
Wu and A. Blake, (2023). *The Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Air Travel Demand: Some Evidence From China.*, SAGE Open, vol. 13, no. 1.
ud Din, Mohi, Muhammad Tanveer, and Muhammad Faizan Khan. (2025). The green shift: harnessing leadership, HR, and culture for sustainable success, Waste Management Bulletin, p. 100220.
Zeng and X. Hu, (2024). A study of the psychological mechanisms of job burnout: implications of person–job fit and person–organization fit, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 15.
Creswell (2009). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed-Method Approaches., Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.
Hair, G. T. M. Hult, C. M. Ringle, M. Sarstedt, N. P. Danks and S. Ray, (2021). An Introduction to Structural Equation Modeling, in Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) Using R., Springer.
Ghanad (2023). An Overview of Quantitative Research Methods, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS, vol. 6, no. 8.
Bougie and U. Sekaran, (2019). Research Methods For Business, Enhanced eText, 8 ed., WILEY.
Podsakoff, S. B. MacKenzie and N. P. Podsakoff, (2012). Sources of method bias in social science research and recommendations on how to control it, Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 63, p. 539–569.
Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 117-134.
Demerouti, E., Bakker, A. B., Nachreiner, F., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2001). The job demands-resources model of burnout, Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 86, no. 3, p. 499–512.
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry, World Psychiatry, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 103–111.
Gázquez Linares, J. J., Molero Jurado, M. del M., Pérez-Fuentes, M. del C., Martos Martínez, Á., & Simón Márquez, M. del M. (2022). Mediating Role of Emotional Intelligence in the Relationship between Anxiety Sensitivity and Academic Burnout in Adolescents, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 572.
Alonso Tabares, F. Mora-Camino and A. Drouin, (2021). A multi-time scale management structure for airport ground handling automation, Journal of Air Transport Management, vol. 90.
Gázquez Linares, M. d. M. Molero Jurado, M. d. C. Pérez-Fuentes, Á. Martos Martínez and M. d. M. Simón Márquez, (2022). Mediating Role of Emotional Intelligence in the Relationship between Anxiety Sensitivity and Academic Burnout in Adolescent, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 572.
Xie, J. Zhang and A. M. Morrison, (2021). Developing a Scale to Measure Tourist Perceived Safety, Journal of Travel Research, vol. 60, no. 6, p. 1232–1251.
Fornell and D. F. .. Larcker, (1981). Evaluating Structural Equation Models with Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error, Journal of Marketing Research, vol. 18, no. 1, p. 39.
Butt, J., M. Tanveer, M. Alqahtani, M. Khan and Z. Khan, (2025). Buying Environmentally Sustainable Products: The Role of Materialism and Product Comparison in Purchasing Behavior, Uncertain Supply Chain Management, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 195–210.
Saddique, W. Zeng, P. Zhao and A. Awan, (2023). Understanding multidimensional poverty in pakistan: implications for regional and demographic-specific policies, Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Qubahan Academic Journal

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.



