Extent research on the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is scattered and inconsistent (i.e., positive, negative, and curvilinear) under various theoretical perspectives. Drawing from Group Engagement Model (GEM), we integrate existing theoretical perspectives to develop an integrative model. It helps to clarify the nature of OCB and the functions of ethical leadership at team-level, and to reconcile the inconsistency. Consistent to the three propositions of GEM, we propose and find that: 1) TOCBs can be facilitated via an intrinsically identity-based mechanism (i.e., the serial mediation hypothesis on procedural justice climate and social identity); 2) TOCBs cannot be facilitated via an instrumentally resource-exchange based mechanisms (i.e., social resources such as leader-member exchange and psychological safety climate), but 3) can be facilitated via the indirect effect of social identity (i.e., the indirect effect hypothesis on social resources and social identity). Data from 337 employees of 88 teams with a time-lagged survey supported our predictions. We discuss the theoretical contributions to the literatures on ethical leadership, cooperative behaviors, and GEM.
