The relationship between ethical leadership and employee well-being has often been overlooked. This problem has been suggested to hold negative outcomes on employees and organizations. Little to no research exists on ethical leadership and well-being within the NewSpace industry, which is a high-performance, demanding field of work. Based on the social exchange theory, this cross-sectional study investigated the effect of ethical leadership on employee eudaimonic well-being, as well as underlying mechanisms and factors such as distributive justice. The sample comprised 101 adults working in the NewSpace industry, who completed measures of demographics, ethical leadership, eudaimonic well-being, and distributive justice. A simple mediated regression was used to examine the hypotheses, which was further investigated through a Sobel test, and bootstrapping through PROCESS software. The results revealed that ethical leadership significantly influenced employee eudaimonic well-being. This effect was significantly mediated by distributive justice. These findings shine light on underresearched areas within leadership and well-being literature, and may provide novel strategies for NewSpace organizations to tackle issues of leadership, well-being, and distributive justice. Recommendations are proposed.
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