LAUSR

AIM To investigate the outcomes and the effect sizes of ethical leadership in nursing practice BACKGROUND: Many meta-analysis of ethical leadership have conducted in other fields, but there are none of the effects of ethical leadership of nurse leaders and should be investigated EVALUATION: For a systematic literature review, we searched PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, CINAHL, OVID, Web of Science, and Korean databases for studies published in Korean or English. We used CMA 2.0 and R 3.6.2 for the meta-analysis KEY ISSUES: We divided the outcomes of ethical leadership into three categories and investigated the effect sizes: subordinates' perceptions of their leaders (ES = 0.65), subordinates' ethical behaviors (ES = 0.04), and job or organizational outcomes (ES = 0.45). In addition, we identified 14 outcome variables, and transformational leadership showed the greatest effect size (ES = 0.77) among them CONCLUSION: This study confirmed the positive effects of ethical nursing leadership on individual nurses' perceptions about their leaders, their jobs, and organizations IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nursing organizations and nurse administrators should make efforts to highlight ethical leadership of nurse leaders to improve outcomes of organizational performance including individual nurses' perceptions about their leaders, their jobs, and organizations.