Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.     

Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance

This article reviews the literature on workplace spirituality, pointing out emergent theories and examining the links between this phenomenon and organizational dynamics. It also examines workplace spirituality in a historical context and compares it to religious beliefs and to established ethical theories and moral principles. The article also looks at organizations in which an emphasis on spiritual values has had an impact on work productivity. While some corporations have institutionalized spirituality, public agencies are reluctant to follow suit for fear of violating the principle of church-state separation. Finally, the article suggests ways that managers and administrators in both the public and the private sector can use workplace spirituality to increase performance and develop ethical organizations.     

Religion, Spirituality, and the Workplace: Challenges for Public Administration

The relationship between religion and politics in the United States is a much-studied academic area, particularly evident in political institutional and behavioral venues such as interest groups, electoral behavior, and political culture. One academic area that has not received much attention is the influence of religion on public administration. Recently, however, public administration scholars have begun to mimic their counterparts in the business world by examining the role of religion and spirituality in the public workplace, especially with regard to organizational performance, ethical behavior patterns, decision making, and the personal spiritual health of employees. This article examines the role and impact of religion and spirituality in the workplace, reviews court cases and political measures regarding religious expression in the public sector, explores a private sector model to explain the interrelationship between religion and spirituality in the public workplace, and challenges public administrators to consider the positive role that religion and spirituality can play in the public workplace.     

Integrating Values into Public Service: The Values Statement as Centerpiece

The public administration community needs to focus more attention on how values can be integrated into the structures, processes, and systems of public organizations. In particular, greater emphasis should be placed on the values statement as the central component of a values regime. This article examines the content and format of values statements in four Westminster-style governments, initiatives to make values a pervasive influence in public-service operations, and learning points for other countries. Each government's values statement should capture the essence of public service. Leaders must serve as both exemplary models of values-based behavior and skillful practitioners of the art of values management. A values statement expressing values that are shared at all organizational levels—combined with the dispersal of leadership roles throughout the organization—provides an especially strong foundation for integrating values into public service.     

Spirituality and Public Service

The common pronouncement of a career in public service as a "calling" echoes with a decidedly spiritual chord. However, the spiritual roots of public service have been ignored in much of the public administration scholarship. This essay examines the empirical connection between individual spirituality and participation in public service occupations. Data from the 1998 General Social Survey are analyzed to determine whether those in public service occupations are more spiritual than persons in non–public service occupations. The findings indicate that individuals in public service occupations, especially government-related ones, are in fact more spiritual in their attitudes than others. Moreover, belief in the notions of transcendence and compassion for others are more pronounced in public service employees. Finally, the experience of interconnectedness and life meaning is greater for those in the public service.     

Public Service Motivation,Organizational Social Capital,and Knowledge Sharing in the Korean Public Sector

This article investigates whether public service motivation (PSM) and organizational social capital predict knowledge sharing in the public sector. The hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are verified with the online survey data of 506 public employees in Korea. The test results show that the two dimensions of PSM (attraction to public service and commitment to public values) and the trust component of organizational social capital are both positively related to knowledge sharing in the Korean public sector, and that the associability component of organizational social capital is indirectly associated with knowledge sharing through its influence on PSM. The article discusses the ways that PSM and organizational social capital may contribute to overcome the social dilemma of knowledge sharing in public organizations. It also suggests that there is need for further research on the individual dimensions of the PSM construct.     

Enforcement or Ethical Capacity: Considering the Role of State Ethics Commissions at the Millennium

Looking back on the twentieth century, the American public has witnessed numerous incidents of unethical behavior by a variety of federal, state, and local government officials. Ongoing cases of political and bureaucratic corruption raise questions about what governments are doing to prevent these "ethical lapses." Most state governments have comprehensive ethics laws and ethics commissions to enforce these laws. Very few studies have examined the role of ethics commissions in state government. This article stems from research conducted during 1997–98 involving more than 60 anonymous interviews with ethics officials and stakeholders in Connecticut, Florida, and New York. This analysis reveals that ethics commissions are instruments and symbols, policemen and consultants, politicians and neutral technicians, and interpreters of and prisoners to the ethics laws. The article concludes with 10 recommendations to improve ethics enforcement and the ethics-building capacity of state governments as society enters the next millennium.     

Transformational Leadership and Public Service Motivation: Driving Individual and Organizational Performance

Despite growing evidence about prosocial motivations and their effects on employee behavior, how can new public service motivation research translate into more effective management practices—which, so far, regrettably remain underdeveloped? Increasingly, public service motivation studies have moved from understanding what motivates public servants to exploring how public service motives influence performance. Similarly, greater attention is now paid to the practices of transformational leadership. Drawing on concepts from transformational leadership, this essay explores how managers can harness the positive aspects of public service motivation to enhance employee and organizational performance and outlines strategies that can help managers incorporate public service motivation values across management systems.     

The use of mindfulness to promote ethical decision making and behavior: Empirical evidence from the public sector in Thailand

The study has two main purposes. First, the study explores core ethical values and behaviors from the perspective of Thai public service organizational leaders. Second, the study investigates the extent to which public sector leaders in Thailand consider Buddhist-based mindfulness practice to be a potentially effective mechanism for reinforcing core ethical values and behaviors in the public sector in Thailand. Using interview data derived from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 senior public sector officials in Thailand, the analysis elicits four dimensions of core ethical values and behaviors that are perceived by Thai public service organizational leaders as central to ethical behavior in the public sector. The study also sheds light on the interviewees' positive perceptions towards mindfulness and the role its associated practices can play in promoting ethical decision making and behavior in the public sector in Thailand.     

Motivated to Adapt? The Role of Public Service Motivation as Employees Face Organizational Change

Researchers concerned with organizational change have consistently emphasized the role that the work environment plays in employee acceptance of change. Underexamined in the public management literature, however, is the role that employee values, particularly public service motivation (PSM), may play in employee acceptance of change. Some scholars have noted a positive correlation between employee PSM and organizational change efforts; this article extends this work by attempting to isolate the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Using data from a survey of employees in a city undergoing a reorganization and reduction in workforce, the authors find that only employees who scored high on a single dimension of PSM—self‐sacrifice—were more likely than others to support organizational change. Rather than support changes for their potential to improve public service, this finding suggests that employees with higher PSM may simply be less likely to resist changes that might disadvantage them personally.     

Value-Based Integrity Management and Bureaucratic Organizations: Changing the Mix

ABSTRACT

This article examines integrity management initiatives designed to introduce more value-based elements in public bureaucracies. Incorporating value-based practices, which emphasize the personal ethical responsibilities of individual public servants, into a hierarchical, rule-based system may present difficult organizational problems. A central issue is to determine whether any change has actually occurred or whether the organization is simply functioning as it did previously. In addition, there are problems of implementation: new value-based initiatives may conflict with the pre-existing system; they may not be adequately reflected in training programs; and there may be differential impacts on departments and agencies. We analyze problems in this new organizational mix in a classical Weberian bureaucracy, the Hong Kong civil service. The findings are based on a 2011–2012 administrative ethics survey of 355 senior public servants, a separate survey of 70 Ethics Officers, and semi-structured interviews with 32 senior public servants.     

Economic Rationalism and Public Sector Ethics: Conflicts and Catalysts

Given recent focus on unethical activity and failings in corporate governance in the private sector, this paper briefly overviews the application of 'economic rationalism' in public administration and its impacts on the ethics of public sector decisions. It is argued that although 'unethical' decisions in public administration may be influenced by the economic imperatives embodied in 'economic rationalist' policies, it does not follow that the application of economic principles is necessarily inconsistent or injurious to ethical outcomes. In many instances the application of economic principles in public administration adds value by making existing ethical conflicts transparent and enabling more informed decisions.     

Public sector leadership‐subordinate ethical diffusion conundrum: perspectives from developing African countries

The interaction between organizational superiors and their subordinates has a practical implication on the entire organizational life cycle in terms of ethical conduct. This study explores how ethics among public leadership could trickle down on the conduct of public employees by using two empirical cases from developing African countries context. Using the attraction–selection–attrition and social learning models, the study assesses how superiors influence street level bureaucrats' interaction with clients or customers. Drawing from existing cases and other secondary data, we propose a leadership‐ethical diffusion model that argues that subordinates' perception and experience of superiors' behavior tend to create a kind of organizational ‘ethical groupthink’, which spans the rank and file of the organization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Changing the paradigm of disability from stigma to equity in university social work education in Kyrgyzstan

The main aim of this paper is to tease out the historical and deeply rooted ethical standards, spirituality, and social values that have long supported the social service system in Kyrgyzstan, which, today, faces pressure to align with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The data are based on an intervention conducted as part of the European Union-Social Protection Systems programme in Kyrgyzstan between 2017 and 2018 where 30 university lecturers were part of. Interviews both to the Kyrgyz trainers with disabilities and to the trainees of the university lecturers as well as follow-up survey conducted in 2019 form important part of data for this paper. We first investigate the conventional ethical standards, spiritual explanations, and social values related to disabilities within the Kyrgyz social protection system and social services. We elaborate on the Kyrgyz context of the societal ethics, spirituality, and values around disability in the Kyrgyz university education for social workers. Second, we analyse the transformation of the perception of disability among the university lecturers. We conclude this paper with a discussion on the negotiation between a charity-based approach that reinforces the stigmatization of disability and a human rights-based approach that promotes paradigm change, to contribute to global discourse of social change towards disability inclusion.     

The training and development of top executives in developing countries: A tanzanian approach

The training and development of public service employees is now accepted to be a major contributor to organizational performance. In the Third World, however, much of the training effort has been directed at junior, supervisory and middle-level personnel. Top personnel were, for a long time, presumed to be ‘above training’. There is now, however, an awakening to the need for training all categories of personnel. The major constraint in most countries remains the lack of facilities and trainers able to handle senior personnel. Tanzania has recently embarked on a concerted effort to train its top public service personnel through the mobilization of all management/administrative training capabilities in a joint, concerted endeavour, under the aegis of the Ministry of Manpower Development and a body known as the National Standing Training Team on Top Executive Development (NSTT). More than 20 6-week courses have been run and a recent evaluation of the programme suggests that they are popular and have reactivated an interest in training among top executives. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the training has resulted in improved performance in public organizations although some executives have introduced some innovations in their organizations which they derived from the training programme.     

The Role of Organizations in Fostering Public Service Motivation

In seeking to explain the antecedents of public service motivation, James Perry focuses on the formative role of sociohistorical context. This study tests Perry's theory and examines the role that organizational factors play in shaping public service motivation, based on responses from a national survey of state government health and human service managers. The findings support the role of sociohistorical context, showing that public service motivation is strongly and positively related to level of education and membership in professional organizations. The results also underscore the significant influence of organizational institutions, indicating that red tape and length of organizational membership are negatively related to public service motivation, whereas hierarchical authority and reform efforts have a positive relationship. Therefore, public organizations have both an opportunity and a responsibility to create an environment that allows employees to feel they are contributing to the public good.     

A small civil service in transition: the case of Estonia

Although scholars have shown consistent interest in small states in past decades, the Republic of Estonia has not been included in any study of small states owing to its brief history of independent statehood. This article provides an overview of the development of the Estonian civil service, to enable readers to understand the background and scope of reforms in the 1990s. The objective of the study is to test previous findings on small states using empirical research into the Estonian civil service. Interviews with civil servants reveal a few new characteristics attributable to the size of a state such as personalization of units and organizational objectives, and additional sources of organizational instability. However, it is argued that several problems of public administration in developing countries and small states overlap, which creates difficulties in distinguishing between developmental factors and the size of the state as determinants. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding evolving public motivational practices: An institutional analysis

New public management (NPM) has been the focus of research and reform practices in countries globally since the late 1970s. This article looks at NPM in historical perspective with particular attention to understanding the evolution of public motivational practices. Three different eras and motivational models common in OECD countries are discussed—the bureaucratic model, the NPM model, and the new public service model. This long‐linked historical perspective highlights the interplay between administrative theory and realpolitik. It is possible to see how certain priorities have been a result of or led to the preservation, the adaptation, or the discontinuation of practices in alignment with the values and behaviors of the successive reform eras. Additional research into the dynamics of change in the public sector is suggested.     

Pulling the Levers: Transformational Leadership,Public Service Motivation,and Mission Valence

This article contributes to our understanding of public service motivation and leadership by investigating ways in which organizational leaders can reinforce and even augment the potential effects of public service motivation on employees’ attraction to the organization’s mission (mission valence). The results contribute to two research questions. First, the findings provide new evidence on the sources of public service motivation. The authors find that transformational leadership is an organizational factor associated with higher public service motivation. Second, the article examines the relationship between transformational leadership and mission valence. The authors find that transformational leadership has an important indirect effect on mission valence through its influence on clarifying organizational goals and fostering public service motivation.