Toward an Organizational Ethics Culture Framework: An Analysis of Survey Data From Local Government Managers

Abstract

This research explores what public managers think about the elements of an ethical organizational culture predominately discussed in the literature. It develops a multidimensional framework of these elements and uses it to explore data from a national survey of local government administrators. The framework is derived from the literature in public administration on organizational ethics. This research tests the organizational ethics framework on city managers, one type of public manager. The results of the survey at the local level showed a need for more priority setting in public administration on ethics and organizational culture. Our major finding is that an ethical organizational culture is multidimensional, containing six main elements. Together these should be understood to explain the ethics culture in local government organizations and potentially other governments.