The impact companies have on society is constantly growing due to private sector-led economic development. With the increasing demand for corporate social responsibility, ethical management is perceived as an essential strategy for enhancing enterprise value and ensuring sustainable development [1,2,3].

Hotel companies are highly dependent on human services; thus, the employee–customer relationship significantly determines the success or failure of a company. Morality and ethical behavior of employees are important in these customer relationships [4]. Organization members tend to violate ethical strictures due to excessive work demanded by the organization or incorrect rules or procedures rather than personal reasons [5]. Organization members tend to accept and internalize the organizational climate in their work environment—they are affected significantly by it [6]. Victor and Cullen [7] defined ethical climate as a pervasive organizational characteristic that affects how an organization’s decisions are made—the shared perception of what ethically correct behavior is and how ethical issues can be handled [7]. Dickson et al. [8] referred to ethical climate as a special case of organizational climate, and Fritzsche [9] stressed that ethical climate is a subset of organizational climate, rather than the ethical values of individuals. Nevertheless, Lu and Lin [10] assert that the ethical climate within the organization has a significant impact on the ethical behavior of members. Ethical climate performs many roles in an organization. It helps resolve ethical issues by guiding employees on what they must do when facing a moral dilemma [11,12,13]. In other words, ethical climate serves as the perceptual lens through which employees diagnose and assess situations in the organizational context [11].

Members that more strongly perceive the ethical climate in the organization show a stronger will to conduct ethical behaviors and practices [14]. No system can actually list all details related to the application of ethics and define them in advance. This is why the ethical climate is more important in securing organizational ethicality than institutional regulations. Unethical behavior by/in an egoistic organization can be reduced by creating an ethical climate [15], and this can also change the organizational climate positively [16].

Organizational trust is important due to the nature of hotel jobs, which involve many interactions among employees. No variable affects individual or group attitudes or behavior as much as trust [17]. Trust is, accordingly, the most important factor that affects the interactions of organization members, and job performance can also be improved by trust [18,19]. A high level of trust in leaders encourages organization members to find ways to have more impact during working hours and actively participate in activities aside from their prescribed roles [20], thereby benefiting both the organization and its members [21].

In hotel companies, which must sensitively handle environmental changes in a customer-focused way, employees must deal with all kinds of different customers with diverse backgrounds and cultures. There are limitations in how fully these employees can be managed based on set rules due to their considerable variety of jobs. Therefore, the hotel staff must make efforts and act voluntarily in addition to performing their given roles; the concept that sums this up is organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). To adapt to rapid environmental changes and survive, such behavior, aside from the prescribed roles of members, is also important. It is difficult for organizations that depend only on the prescribed roles and behaviors of members to survive in competition [22]. In general, organizations want employees to take ownership of their roles and behave in a way that considers the organization’s interests, as opposed to simply performing their explicit duties [23]. OCB is an activity that promotes organizational functions not specifically prescribed by the organization, based on voluntary motivation and the will of members [24]. OCB can increase organizational efficiency and improve performance without additional cost to or support from the organization [25,26].

Accordingly, studies on ethical climate are being conducted in the hotel and hospitality industry. For example, there are studies on ethical work climate in lodging operations as perceived by general managers [27], ethical climate and organizational trust [28], and the relevance of variables such as the following: job satisfaction [29,30], job embeddedness [31], employee compassion [32], organizational commitment [29,33], organizational identification [34], OCB [35], employee incivility [36], workplace deviant behavior [37], and service quality [30]. Moreover, there are studies on unethical managerial behavior [38].

However, there is little research on the effect that ethical climate in hotel companies has on organizational trust, and organizational trust’s effect on OCB. Lee et al. [28] examined the effect of ethical climate on organizational trust among employees of a food service franchise, and most studies have viewed ethical climate as a single factor [31,33,37].

In hotel companies, where ethical issues surface frequently, the ethical climate that encourages the sharing of ethical awareness and promotes ethical decision making and behavior is necessary to bring about ethical behavior among employees [7,10,14,27]. Organizational trust among employees at hotel companies raises organizational performance not only through explicitly defined roles that instill a sense of unity and commitment to the organization, but also through undefined roles by inducing OCB where employees voluntarily perform tasks [22,25,35]. Hence, continuous progress based on performance improvements of an organization is possible by raising organizational trust among employees and encouraging their voluntary participation or OCB through the establishment of an ethical climate in hotel companies.

2. Ethical Climate