Does Increasing Gender Representativeness and Diversity Improve Organizational Integrity?

Abstract

Recent scholarship has suggested that representative bureaucracy improves organizational integrity. This article tests this argument with respect to gender, using data from Korean government agencies from 2008 to 2014. The findings suggest that an increase in female representation and diversity in public organizations leads to an improvement in the measured level of organizational integrity. We found, however, that incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence in the workplace were positively, not negatively, correlated with increased female representation. This apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that a greater female representation may empower female officials to report unfair treatment or injustice that has hitherto been unreported and tolerated. Finally, the evidence suggests that the positive impact of representative bureaucracy on organizational integrity becomes substantially greater when the agency has a female leader. This suggests that a leader’s gender influences the attitudes and behaviors of gender-congruent street-level bureaucrats.