Transformational-transactional leadership and unethical pro-organizational behavior in the public sector: does public service motivation make a difference?

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on a unique phenomenon known as ‘unethical pro-organizational behaviour (UPB)’ that an explicit discussion on it is rarely present within public administration. We investigate the role of transactional and transformational leadership on UPB in the public sector using survey data on 4,166 bureaucrats in South Korea. Also, we explore how public service motivation (PSM) moderates the relationship between leadership and UPB. The results reveal that transactional leadership is positively related to followers’ UPB. On the other hand, transformational leadership has a curvilinear relationship (inverted U-shaped) with employees’ UPB. These findings show that followers’ unethical behaviour for the sake of organization is vulnerable to the leaders’ influence, but the direction of impact may vary depending on their leadership style. Moreover, we find that PSM moderates the relationship between two different leadership styles and follower’s UPB. These results imply that individual civil servants, even if their behaviours are under the great influence of leaders, can control UPB through public service identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Unethical pro-organizational behaviour
• transformational leadership
• transactional leadership
• public service motivation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

UPB (Umphress and Bingham 2011; Morrison 2006)

If it would help my organization, it will be fine to exaggerate the truth about my organization’s performance.

If needed, it will be fine to conceal information from the public that could be damaging to my organization’s reputation.

If it would benefit my organization, it is acceptable to misrepresent the truth to make my organization look good.

If it would help my organization, it will be fine to ignore the rule or regulations in the process.

Cronbach’s α for these items is 0.8224

Transactional Leadership (Caillier and Sa 2017; Caillier 2018; Moon and Park 2019; Oberfield 2014)

Promotion in my organization depends on how well employees perform their jobs.

In my organization, pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs.

In my organization, steps are taken to deal with a poor performer who cannot or will not improve.

Cronbach’s α for these items is 0.7151.

Transformational Leadership

My leader (or supervisor) often talks about his/her vision for the future of the organization.

My leader (or supervisor) encourages his/her subordinates to adapt themselves to new circumstances affecting the atmosphere and environment of the organization.

The relationship between leader (or supervisor) and subordinates in this organization can be seen as equivalent.

Cronbach’s α for these items is 0.6722.

PSM (Perry 1996; Song et al. 2017)

I feel a considerable amount of responsibility for society.

I consider public service as my civic duty.

Public service is more meaningful than myself.

I am willing to accept personal detriment to help other people.

Contribution to society is more important than my own accomplishment.

Cronbach’s α for these items is 0.8354.

Notes

1. Almost all articles on unethical behaviours in public administration have focused on corruption, typically defined by scholars as the misuse of public office for private gain (Shleifer and Vishny 1993; Kaufmann 1997; Mauro 1998; Gupta, Hanges, and Dorfman 2002). For an exception, see Miao et al. (2013) a study to deal that examined the relationship between ethical leadership and UPB using data of 239 public employees in China (Mishra, Ghosh, and Sharma 2021).

2. For a more specific comparison with other concept such as ‘necessary evils’, ‘organizational misbehaviour’, ‘deviance and pro-self unethical behaviour’, see Umphress and Bingham (2011) and Mishra, Ghosh, and Sharma (2021).

3. There may be numerous other dimensions for categorizing UPB. We tried to clearly define the specific nature of UPB in our study, thereby enabling us to structure the literature on organizational misbehaviours.

4. Although there are multiple definitions of gaming (Bevan and Hood 2006), it can be understood as generating positive performance data or misrepresenting effort without achieving the actual objective behind the indicator for benefiting the organization or its members (Benaine and Kroll 2020; Kroll and Vogel 2021).

5. According to Kroll and Vogel (2021), organizational cheating and effort reduction is often illegal because they are severe in degree of manipulation regarding their detriment for external stakeholders.

6. They also acknowledged that other factors such as peers and formal organization systems (e.g. ethics code and ethical training programmes).

7. We do not argue that all participants were inevitable scapegoats. We want to emphasize that the existence of a legitimate authority figure allowed them to pass off their ethical responsibility to another (Moore and Gino 2013). Leaders, especially in the bureaucratic structure, could be powerful legitimate authorities.

8. One may argue that transactional leaders emphasize individual goals instead of organizational or collective goals (Hamstra et al. 2014). However, individual employee goals are generally set for supporting overall organizational goals. Moreover, through appropriate incentives, the self-interest of individual employees may more easily align with organizational goals (Jensen et al. 2019).

9. Organizations have no duty to set ethical goals for individuals, and ethical ways do not always guarantee the best interests of the organization (Niven and Healy 2016).

10. Research on PSM in different national contexts has been of great interest to scholars because of numerous issues related to different perspectives on PSM, public service values, and the ‘public’ character of PSM (Vandenabeele and Van de Walle 2008). It is not easy, therefore, to conceptualize and study PSM generally (Bozeman and Su 2015), even though there is broad agreement regarding the main construct of the concept, such as self-sacrifice, and its affective, normative, and rational dimensions. In this article, we operationalize PSM as ‘the belief, values, and attitudes that go beyond self-interest and organizational interest that concern the interest of a larger political entity’ (Vandenabeele 2007, 547). This definition embraces a notion of PSM which combines a set of value-based behavioural determinants with the fulfilment of the public interest (Ripoll 2019).

11. Despite the unending questions and difficulties in the study of PSM, a large body of empirical literature examines the impact of PSM in various geographical settings (see Ritz, Brewer, and Neumann 2016, for systemic review using a meta-analysis). Studies that conducted in different institutional and environmental circumstances identified PSM as a key factor contributing to various individual and organizational outcomes, including job satisfaction (Alonso and Lewis 2001; Homberg, McCarthy, and Tabvuma 2015; Pandey 2008), sector choice (Carpenter, Doverspike, and Miguel 2012; Christensen and Wright 2011; Clerkin and Coggburn 2012), individual and organizational performance (Andersen et al. 2012; Brewer and Brewer 2011; Giauque, Anderfuhren-Biget, and Varone 2013), intention to leave and turnover rate (Steijn 2008), and organizational citizenship behaviour (Bolino et al. 2013; Kim 2004).

12. Moral identity operationalized as the degree to which an individual defines her/himself to be a moral person (Aquino & Reed, 2002). According to Ripoll (2019), there are several similarities between moral identity and PSM. First, both concepts rely on social identity. Second, both concepts are cultivated through interactions between individuals and institutions. Third, both concepts have strong motivational influence to predict self-consistency between one’s self-concept and behaviour or attitudes. Concerning this conceptual and theoretical closeness, we expect PSM and moral identity to be interrelated.

13. Alternatively, ordered logit or probit can be used, but the results are not different from those obtained results using OLS. Moreover, OLS is easier to display. The results using ordered logit or probit are available on request. We found that all Gauss-Markov assumptions were met except for multicollinearity, which resulted from including squared terms. For the analyses of leadership styles’ squared terms, these variables were mean-centred at their means to resolve multicollinearity issues, as was recommended by Robinson and Schumacker (2009).

14. Regarding model explanatory power, Cohen (1988: 413–414) explained that models can have small (R² =0.02), medium(R² =0.13), and large effects(R² =0.26) based on the R² value. The R² of models in this study satisfied more than 0.13, which can be seen as a medium effect suggested by Cohen, except I model 1 (R² =0.122).