Do Codes of Conduct and Ethical Leadership Influence Public Employees’ Attitudes and Behaviours? An experimental analysis

Abstract

Corruption, political scandals, and the spreading adoption of management practices in the public sector contribute to a decline in public trust. Worldwide initiatives promoting good governance can be observed. At an organizational level, management of ethics has gained in importance as codes of conduct and ethical leadership are promoted. However, public management research has hardly analysed the impacts of these measures. To address this research gap, we conduct a between-subjects experiment among public administration employees. Our results reveal that only ethical leadership has a positive effect on employees’ organization-related attitudes. Our findings suggest avenues for further research.

Key words:

• Code of conduct
• ethical leadership
• public administration
• experiment

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank their colleagues and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. Additionally, the authors are grateful for comments received at the Academy of Management Meeting (2014) and at the European Group for Public Administration Annual Conference (2014). The conference participation was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.