Towards virtuous and ethical organisational performance in the context of corruption: A case study in the public sector

Abstract

Summary With the increasing number of ethical violations reported across the public sector, the emphasis on ethics and values in governance is on the rise. Corruption is widely accepted as a form of unethical behaviour that can have detrimental effects on organisations as well as society at large. Research calls for empirical studies focusing on the contextual factors surrounding corruption. Based on the Contextually Based Human Resource Theory and using the case study method, this paper examines the role of context through a systematic analysis of corruption in a public sector organisation. We integrate corruption and human resource literature to understand employee behaviour, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes in the context of organisational corruption.

Virtue and virtuousness in organizations: Guidelines for ascribing individual and organizational moral responsibility

“…At the same time, our guidelines for ascribing degrees of individual and organizational responsibility could be used in practice as a tool (see Table 2) not only to fine‐tune organizations internally at various levels (e.g., individual, team, department), but also to generate soft proactive regulation in various industries. Our suggestion is that such a tool can work as a suitable solution against “the inability of regulatory codes to predict every possible ethical dilemma in initiating and managing stakeholder action” (Fernando & Bandara, 2020, p. 202). Our guidelines for individual and organizational responsibility may thus be used in practice to deal proactively with conflicting stakeholder goals and expectations, enabling managers and policy makers to cope with fast changing and diverse situational dynamics.…”

“…Future research could look into external factors that may also bear responsibility—for instance, industry, national, cultural, political, or social actors (Arjoon et al., 2018; Gonin et al., 2012)—and into the shifting role of organizations in the international arena (Scherer et al., 2016). To address contextual factors relevant for organizational misbehavior but also for the development of organizational virtuousness, the methodology in this article might be complemented by approaches such as Contextually Based Human Resource Theory (Fernando & Bandara, 2020). This might contribute to efforts aimed at integrating the three levels that seem to account for organizational failure: the individual, the organizational and the external environment levels, what has been labelled as bad apples, bad barrels, and bad larders (Fernando & Bandara, 2020; Gonin et al., 2012).…”

“…To address contextual factors relevant for organizational misbehavior but also for the development of organizational virtuousness, the methodology in this article might be complemented by approaches such as Contextually Based Human Resource Theory (Fernando & Bandara, 2020). This might contribute to efforts aimed at integrating the three levels that seem to account for organizational failure: the individual, the organizational and the external environment levels, what has been labelled as bad apples, bad barrels, and bad larders (Fernando & Bandara, 2020; Gonin et al., 2012).…”

“…As a result, the connection between the two levels of responsibility remains under‐researched (Dempsey, 2013; Isaacs, 2011) despite evidence that not only individuals determine organizational direction, but organizational conditions also influence individual ethical behavior (Bright et al., 2011; Bruhn, 2009; Crane & Matten, 2016; Meyer, 2018). It is against this background that scholars call for a new ethical framework that encompasses the mutually reinforcing levels of individual, organizational, and socio‐economic‐political governance and that might explain organizational ethical failure (Arjoon et al., 2018; Fernando & Bandara, 2020).…”

Public service ethics, values and spirituality in developing and transitional countries: Challenges and opportunities

“…Fernando and Bandara integrate corruption and human resource literature in order to offer insights into employee behavior, employee relations, HRM strategies, and organisational outcomes. Their findings indicate that HRM practices are shaped by both external and internal contingency factors including strategic choice inputs, and these contingency factors impact the performance of organisations (Fernando & Bandara, 2020).…”