Advancing Ethics in Public Organizations: The Impact of an Ethics Program on Employees’ Perceptions and Behaviors in a Regional Council

Itai Beeri (), Rachel Dayan, Eran Vigoda-Gadot and Simcha Werner

Journal of Business Ethics, 2013, vol. 112, issue 1, 59-78

Abstract: Ethics in public administration has been a subject of growing interest for both researchers and practitioners interested in the future of governance. This study examined the relationship between ethics and performance in local governance. We tested the effects over time of an ethics program on employees’ perceptions (awareness of the code of ethics, ethical leadership, inclusion of employees in ethical decision making [EDM], ethical climate [EC], organizational commitment, and quality of work life [QWL]) and behavior (organizational citizenship behavior) in one Israeli regional council. We conducted a longitudinal study of 108 employees, using data from a two-phase survey (before implementation of the ethics program and a year after) and objective assessments of employees’ behavior through managers’ evaluations. The main findings show that the ethics program was very effective, resulting in greater awareness of the code of ethics, increased inclusion of employees in EDM, and an improved EC. Furthermore, ethical leadership was positively related to employees’ awareness of the code of ethics, increased inclusion of employees in EDM, an improvement in the EC, greater organizational commitment, and higher QWL. Implications and suggestions for future studies are discussed. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: Public organizations; Ethics program; Codes of ethics; Ethical leadership; Ethical decision making; Ethical climate; Organizational commitment; Quality of work life; Organizational citizenship behavior; Local government (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-012-1232-7 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:112:y:2013:i:1:p:59-78

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-012-1232-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().