The Effect of Ethical Climate and Organizational Control Mechanisms on Work Engagement: A Research in the Civil Aviation Sector

It is observed that the aviation sector plays an important role in the increase of international trade to Türkiye. In addition, the aviation industry offers important benefits in terms of sustainable development, social, political, environmental, and economic factors. In particular, as a service sector, the success of the aviation industry is mainly due to human resource efforts. Employees who are committed to their work and even engaged going beyond are therefore considered to make an important contribution to their organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine how ethical climate and organizational control mechanisms affect work engagement. In this direction, data were collected from 387 employees working in an airline company, which is the most valuable brand of Turkey, through a questionnaire. The results of the regression analyses conducted show that the ethical climate dimensions, especially the benevolence and principledness climate dimensions, have a significant and positive impact on work engagement, while the egoistic climate has a significant and negative impact. On the other hand, organizational control dimensions, especially input control and behavioral control, were found to have a significant and positive impact on work engagement. Output control, on the other hand, did not have a significant impact on work engagement. Thus, the importance of the climate of benevolence or principledness to be created in organizations operating in the aviation sector has emerged.