Understanding how Public Service Motivation (PSM) is tied to ethical or unethical conduct is critically important, given that civil servants and other public sector employees throughout the world have been shown to exhibit high PSM levels. However, empirical evidence about the relationship between PSM and ethical or unethical behavior remains limited, due in part to the challenges of observing unethical conduct and overcoming social desirability bias in self-reported measures. We address these challenges by employing incentivized experimental games to study the relationships between PSM and two types of unethical behavior – corruption and dishonesty – as well as one type of ethical behavior: altruism. Based on data from approximately 1870 university students at three research sites in Russia and Ukraine, we find evidence of a robust negative association between PSM and willingness to engage in corruption and a positive association between PSM and altruistic behavior. Results concerning dishonesty are more mixed. Our findings indicate that corruption and dishonesty are related yet fundamentally distinct concepts, particularly with respect to their compatibility with PSM. The findings additionally demonstrate that hypotheses about PSM and behavioral ethics generated in the Western context generalize well to the starkly different institutional context of the former Soviet Union.

The article analyses the system of public governance in Russia, including two main sub-divisions of reforms, namely, civil service reform, and administrative reform. The authors examine the principal historical stages of both reforms as the parts of the Russian system of public governance evolution. The configuration of main actors of Russian governance reforms and of government-market relations are presented. The paper focuses on generalising some major characteristics of the administrative mechanisms of governance in Russia as the complex and interlinked entities. Some key elements of Russian governance reforms are described, including organisational aspects of civil service, optimisation of the functions and structure of the executive bodies, implementation of results-based management mechanisms and improvement of the regulatory system, public services delivery, one stop shop procedures, E-government.

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Throughout much of the world, corruption in the civil service undermines state capacity, impedes economic development, and saps citizens' morale. But while its pernicious effects are widely recognized, the roots of corruption remain poorly understood. Whereas most studies on corruption's origins focus on the incentives bureaucrats face once in office, this study contributes to a line of recently emerging research that considers the role of self-selection of citizens with a propensity for corruption into bureaucracies where corruption is known to be widespread. Drawing on a survey and experimental games conducted with students at an elite university in Moscow, Russia, we compare the attitudinal, behavioral, and demographic traits of students seeking public sector employment to the traits of their peers seeking jobs in the private sector. Contrary to studies conducted in other high-corruption contexts, such as India, we find surprising evidence that students who prefer a public sector career display less willingness to cheat or bribe in experimental games as well as higher levels of altruism. One interpretation of these findings is that corruption in Russia results from the transformation of bureaucrats' behavior and attitudes after entering the civil service, rather than through a process of corrupt self-selection.