Influence of differential leadership on teachers' professional ethics: an empirical study from Chinese universities

In Chinese society, the teachers' professional ethics have been considered important since ancient times and have been widely discussed. This paper aims to explore the mechanism of the influence of differential leadership with local cultural adaptability on college teachers' professional ethics. A total of 403 valid responses were collected from a questionnaire survey of university teachers in many regions of China, and the data were statistically analysed by SPSS17.0 and AMOS22.0. The results showed that differential leadership positively influences college teachers' professional ethics, and college teachers' professional identity plays a mediating role between differential leadership and teachers' professional ethics. The effect of differential leadership on college teachers' professional identity and professional ethics is negatively moderated by the tendency towards collectivism, and it seems to be contrary to the national culture of Chinese, which is high in collectivism, but consistent with the strong will of college teachers and the current workplace characteristics embodied in the sample investigated. It is expected that the research results of this paper can provide theoretical guidance for the construction of teachers' professional ethics in relevant governments and colleges.