What determines ethical behavior in public organizations: is it rules and/or leadership?

Leadership is widely seen as having an important role in fostering ethical conduct in organizations, but the way that leaders intersect with formalised ethical codes in shaping conduct has been little researched. This paper examines this issue through a qualitative study of the operation of the ‘ethical framework’ for English local government; which entailed all councils adopting inter alia a code of conduct to regulate the behaviour of politicians. Local government exemplifies an under-considered aspect of ethical leadership research – the effects of multiple people in leadership roles (managers and politicians) – and demonstrates the value of translational models of power to understand how agency is exercised on ethical conduct. The study finds that organizations with persistently good conduct have multiple leaders that demonstrate good conduct, who act and interact to pre-empt the escalation of problems, but also that such leaders act to minimise explicit, direct use of ethics regulation