Abstract: “In an emerging market such as South African, corporate governing bodies such as the King Code legitimise and promote ethical codes and their importance in organisations (South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, 2017:11-12). As employees have frequent customer interactions, and the quality of these interaction directly affect the customer‟s perception of the organisation; an aspect such as ethical leadership should not be ignored as it greatly affects employees which in turn impacts organisational performance. Bornman and Puth (2017:6) identified four main aspects of what leadership is: (1) it is about who you are, (2) how you act, (3) what you do, and (4) how a leader works with others. Ethical leadership fuses these principles together and includes the fair treatment of employees, integrity and setting ethical guidelines (Yukl, Mahsud, Hassan & Prussia, 2013:38; Yang & Wei, 2018), and according to Shin, Sung, Choi and Kim (2015:45), employees learn ethical behavior from the”

Keywords: Ethical leadership, employee perceptions, organisational commitment, job satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and extra effort