The influence of organizational ethics on job attitudes and government performance

2014-07-17Existing studies in the public sector have emphasized the importance of organizational ethics for ensuring employees' ethical conduct and thereby maintaining democratic government. However, this study argues that the influence of organizational ethics is not limited to public administrators' ethical behaviors but extended to employees' job attitudes and behaviors, and to organizational performance: that is, organizational ethics matters not only for maintaining democratic government but also for promoting effective government. ❧ For this purpose, this study employed a multi-level approach and examined the influence of organizational ethics at two different levels: individual-level and agency-level. At the individual level, this study tested the relationship between organizational ethics and public employees' turnover intentions. Organizational commitment was used as a mediator. At the agency level, this study explored how organizational ethics influences employee job attitudes and behaviors - specifically, organizational commitment, turnover intention, and actual turnover - and how these job attitudes and behaviors in turn influence federal agency performance. Various data sources - i.e., three waves of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (formerly the Federal Human Capital Survey), each agency's Performance and Accountability Report, and the Federal Human Resource Database - were used in order to examine the research questions. ❧ The major findings of this study are threefold. First, the findings support the notion that organizational ethics are an important determinant of employee job attitudes and behaviors. The results at the individual level suggest that organizational ethics is negatively associated with public employees' turnover intentions. In addition, the impact of organizational ethics is partially mediated by organizational commitment: when public employees have more positive perceptions of the ethical practices of their organization, the employees are more likely than others to have higher organizational commitment. Organizational commitment in turn decreases the likelihood of public employees intending to leave their organization. In addition, as agency-level analyses suggest, turnover intention rate is positively associated with actual turnover rate: thus, agencies with lower turnover intention rates are more likely than others to have a lower rate of actual employee turnover. In sum, the results suggest that organizational ethics is an important element of a desirable workplace where employees want to stay. ❧ Next, the findings also support the idea that organizational ethics matter for organizational performance. The results suggest that organizational ethics influence federal agency performance through employee attitudes/behaviors. Specifically, a federal agency with a higher level of organizational ethics is more likely than other agencies to have employees with higher organizational commitment, and the higher level of commitment in the agency in turn positively influences the agency's performance. ❧ Finally, another important finding of this research is the role of organizational commitment in linking ethics to turnover intentions and federal agency performance: in this study, organizational commitment mediates a great portion of the impact of organizational ethics on turnover intention. In addition, organizational commitment fully mediates the relationship between organizational ethics and federal agency performance. These findings indicate that having committed employees can benefit an organization in various ways, and an organization can promote employee commitment by creating an ethically supportive organizational context. ❧ All in all, by examining the relationship between organizational ethics and employee job attitudes and behaviors, this study suggests that organizational ethics is an important determinant of a desirable workplace. In addition, this study brings ethics to the discussion of organizational performance and provides empirical support that ethics matter for government performance