We Need More Research on Unethical Leadership Behavior in Public Organizations

There is a growing interest among Public Administration (PA) scholars in empirically assessing the impact of ethical leadership in public organizations. Recent studies have found that ethical leadership can improve employee commitment, public service motivation, organizational citizenship behavior, and willingness to report unethical conduct of others and reduce unwarranted absences, workplace incivility and corruption (c.f., Bashir & Hassan, 2019; Downe, Cowell, & Morgan, 2016; Hassan, Wright, & Yukl, 2014; Hassan, 2015; Mozumder, 2018; Wright, Hassan, & Park, 2016; Young, Hassan, & Hatmaker, 2019). Few studies in PA, however, have considered the prevalence, causes, and consequences of unethical leadership behavior in public organizations. Yet continuous media reports of unethical behavior by elected officials and public managers suggest that, in addition to assessing the impact of ethical leadership, we should also examine the causes and consequences of unethical leadership behavior in public organizations.

It is important to clarify at the outset what I mean by unethical leadership. Unethical leadership is not the same as the absence of ethical leadership. The absence of ethical leadership is best understood as ethically neutral leadership. Unethical leadership refers to leader behaviors or actions that are illegal or violate existing moral standards (Brown & Mitchell, 2010). Leaders may engage in such behavior to pursue their own interests, interests of their group or organization, or to undermine the interests of others. Common examples of such behavior in the workplace include hostile, abusive, and oppressive behaviors by managers (Tepper, 2007). It also includes behaviors that indirectly promote unethical conduct among followers, for example, encouraging subordinates to boost organizational performance at any cost and condoning unethical behaviors of employees who are “star performers” (Brown & Mitchell, 2010), are similar to the leader in terms of their values or worldviews.

The prevalence of unethical leadership in public organizations is not known due to limited research. However, organizational research suggests that unethical behavior by managers is fairly common. Tepper (2007) notes that approximately 14% of all workers in the United States are subject to abusive supervision by their managers. In the public sector, unethical leadership is not a rare phenomenon. One could argue that it is one of the major drivers of “petty corruption” in many developing countries (Rose-Ackerman & Palifka, 2016). Unethical leadership is also likely to be associated with what Bozeman, Molina, and Kaufmann (2018) refer to as “deep corruption” in many developed nations where public officials use the State’s institutional apparatus to systematically thwart the society’s core public values, for example, by enacting barriers for immigrants and minorities to exercise their voting rights and access public services.

The lack of research on unethical leadership in public organizations can be attributed to several factors. One potential reason is that we have a positive bias. We generally assume that individuals who choose to work in government and nonprofit organizations are ethical, care about the wellbeing of others, and have higher public service motivation (Perry & Wise, 1990). While there is evidence supporting this perspective (c.f., Wright, Hassan, & Park, 2016), it neglects the reality that some public officials and employees in government organizations use their position or authority for personal gains. Another reason is the difficulty that PA scholars often face in getting access to data on unethical behavior by elected officials and public managers. Even when researchers have access, research participants may not feel completely comfortable or safe in divulging information about unethical behaviors of their superiors (Hassan, 2015).

While there has been limited research in PA on the predictors of unethical leadership behavior in public organizations, research on the dark sides of leadership and abusive supervision provide us some clues about the potential predictors of such behavior in public organizations. This literature shows that managers may become hostile and abusive toward subordinates who are poor performers and those who have very dissimilar values (Brown & Mitchell, 2010). There is also evidence that managers who themselves experienced mistreatment in their careers or in their personal lives are more likely to mistreat their subordinates (Aryee, Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007). Unethical leadership has also been linked with certain personality traits including neuroticism; narcissism; social dominance orientation; and right-wing authoritarianism (Brown & Mitchell, 2010; Tepper, 2007).

Unethical behavior by public managers may also result from poorly designed reward systems and unrealistic and misplaced organizational goals. A poorly designed reward system is considered a major cause of bribery in public organizations in developing countries (Rose-Ackerman & Palifka, 2016). The excessive reliance on objective performance measures may encourage some public managers to game the system and allocate organizational resources in ways that maximize measurable performance but undermine public values. For example, while studying performance management operation in the Florida Welfare Transition Program, Soss, Fording, and Schram (2011) found that the use of performance incentives created unhealthy competition among service providers and encouraged some providers to engage in “cream-skimming” behavior by focusing on easy to serve clients and enacting administrative barriers for hard to serve clients.

Inter-group rivalry and conflict may influence public officials to engage in unethical leadership behavior, particularly behaviors that are intended to cause harm or undermine well-being of other groups. Social identity theory suggests that when competition between two groups is high, group members, including the group leader, may try to undermine the other group’s goals in order to maintain or enhance their social position (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). There is both research and historical evidence that identity conflicts can result in the fading of moral values and the development of prejudice towards other groups (Dovidio et al., 2002). Identity conflicts may motivate people to engage in what Adams and Balfour (2015) call “administrative evil.” One could argue that the 2017 Muslim ban (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-02-01/pdf/2017-02281.pdf; https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-09-27/pdf/2017-20899.pdf; https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-04-13/pdf/2018-07864.pdf; https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-03-09/pdf/2017-04837.pdf), the 2018 family separation policy in the United States (https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/file/956856/download; https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1049751/download; https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-06-25/pdf/2018-13696.pdf), and the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar are partly due to identity conflicts and the fading of moral values among public officials.

Many important questions about unethical leadership behavior in the public sector are yet to be explored—for example, how individuals who are known to be unethical are chosen by the public to lead their government. What are the individual, organizational, and societal level predictors of unethical leadership behavior in public organizations? How does unethical leadership behavior affect work motivation and behavior of public sector employees? What are the near- and long-term implications of unethical leadership behavior by public officials on political, legal, and economic institutions? It is imperative that PA scholars pay greater attention to these important questions and critically assess causes and consequences of unethical leadership behavior in public organizations and ways to reduce such behavior.