ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Examining the Relationship Between Empathetic Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industry: The Roles of Altruistic Attitude and Caring Ethical Climate
Chenlin LIU 1
Siwei Sun 2
Guangya Ma 3
Qiang Ma 4
1. Strategic Research Institute, China Rong Tong Asset Management Group Co., Ltd, Beijing, China
2. Department of Management and International Business, Business School, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
3. Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College, Yiwu, China
4. Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Chaoyang, China
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Abstract
Objective–Architecture, engineering, and construction industry plays an essential role in maintaining the sustainable development of the industry and the national economy. In recent years, companies have been forced to deal with challenges in performance and talent management due to the global recession. Although scholars have highlighted the potential role of empathy in management for its positive effect on healing people and enhancing organizational performance and sustainability, limited studies have been conducted in a leadership context in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Based on social information processing theory, we conduct a study in China to examine the mediating role of altruistic attitude and the moderating role of a caring ethical climate in the relationship between empathetic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. Method– Authors collect survey data from 296 employees in a Chinese real estate company to examine the moderated mediation model with regression analyses, supplemented by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Findings– The results revealed that empathetic leadership was positively related to organizational citizenship behavior through altruism. Caring climate served as a significant moderator. Furthermore, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis reveals six configurational paths leading to high-level organizational citizenship behaviors and four configurational paths leading to low-level organizational citizenship behaviors. Conclusion– Based on survey data, this study can contribute to the understanding of empathetic leadership in architecture, engineering, and construction industry by verifying and extending the emotion-cognition process in the Chinese context. They showed that altruism facilitated the effectiveness of empathetic leadership and that caring climate could amplify the effect on employees' organizational citizenship behavior. The results also contribute to organizational citizenship behavior literature by revealing the configurational effects of interactions among empathetic leader, team environment and individuals.
Summary
Keywords
Altruistic attitude, Architecture, engineering, and construction industry, Caring ethical climate, Empathetic leadership, Organizational citizenship behavior, Real estate company
Received
15 December 2025
Accepted
27 January 2026
Copyright
© 2026 LIU, Sun, Ma and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Chenlin LIU; Siwei Sun
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.