Leadership and Integrity
Leaders in the public sector are expected to be effective managers, capable of promoting innovative policies while emphasizing public sector values, such as high standards of integrity and ethics, and steering civil servants to attain high-level productivity (Hamoudah et al., 2021). They must assign public resources to integrity systems and oversee how such resources are prioritized and coordinated. Therefore, integrity is a key pillar in public sector leadership since without the commitment of leaders, it cannot deliver the intended impact (Shinners, 2020). Leadership is the key component for creating and reinforcing a culture of integrity in the public sector organizations. It is important for public sector organizations to prioritize integrity leadership when selecting managers and workers at all levels of the organization.
Integrity involves professional wholeness or responsibility, accountability, impartiality, and incorruptibility (Alam et al., 2018). It is the open reflection on values and morals, which every civil servant is expected to have to serve the public effectively. Leaders with integrity strengthen the organizations they work for, making them attractive to potential employees. Therefore, public servants are judged on competence and character, which includes integrity and the signs that the individual is friendly or hostile. Since the top-level leaders are the most visible in any public service organization, it is important for them to support ethical behavior, accountability, and compliance (Shinners, 2020).
When the public administration leadership is weak in integrity, issues, such as corruption, inefficacy, fraud, weak financial management, and failures in governance are bound to happen. It is for such reasons that leaders in the public sector are pressurized to produce justification of the sources and utilization of public resources and to improve how they provide services since the public has the right to question their performance through citizen participation (Hamoudah et al., 2021). The best leaders in the public sector are expected to utilized value-based system to deliver services to citizens and act as agents of social change.
Citizens’ Participation
Leadership and integrity in public administration ensures that civil servants respect the principles, values, and requirements of the anti-corruption laws (Alam et al., 2018). It is a mechanism that enables citizen participation in areas where public servants are involved as decision-makers. Citizen participation is a crucial principle and value binding all State officers and agencies when implementing public policy decisions. For example, the selection of public officers requires the direct participation of citizens while elected representatives must considers the people’s views before they exercise the sovereign power on behalf of the people. However, issues, such as personal competence, integrity, and suitability of civil service leaders has been an issue in public administration most countries.
Citizen participation is the ability of the people, especially minorities to contribute relevant facts to decision makers, propose policy and reform, argue their position before government decision-makers, veto administrative and legislative proposals, as well as be co-decision makers in how public institutions are managed. Citizen participation refers to the process of actively seeking and responding to people’s input and allowing for meaningful involvement in making governance decisions. It is the process involving the public and inviting then to input their decisions on issues that affect them. Citizen participation aims to share information with, and collect input from, the people with interests in government projects (Gaber, 2019).
For citizen participation to be successful and seamless, leadership and integrity need to be incorporated into the process (Lee, & Schachter, 2019). People impacted by decisions deserve the right to be involved in the processes leading to the decision in a manner that gives them empowerment to contribute to democratic governance. Citizen participation’s crucial aspects include the promotion of integrity and credibility in public organizations since it helps build public confidence and create a sense of neutrality into the vetting and leadership processes.
Allowing and promoting public participation is an indication that leadership and integrity are prioritized with people being given the opportunity to own their institutions. Transparent and open recruitment of public servants should follow serious public vetting, which creates a mechanism for the citizenry to hold civil servants to account (Lee, & Schachter, 2019). Meaningful citizen participation entails consultation, involvement, and informing the public to provide input on the decisions about public administration. Citizen participation in the realm of leadership and integrity includes the power to advice, and provide consultations before a valid administrative conduct. In public administration, therefore, citizen participation entails seeking advice, approval, recommendation, consent, and consultation.
To spur effective leadership, citizens participate in public decisions through information sharing and readily engaging in meaningful interaction. As such, the elements of meaningful participation include early notification, information accessibility, sensitivity to community values, reasonable timing, transparent results, and appropriate participation levels (Gaber, 2019). Leaders need to notify the citizens early enough to allow them to get the opportunity to influence the process before any decisions can be made. Further, information should be availed to the people to ensure participation on a timely basis with access to information following the set laws concerning privacy and information.
Lee and Schachter (2019) explain that citizen participation that follows effective leadership and integrity should be based on information provision and rationale concerning public input on decisions, which involves providing transparent results. The process of citizen participation must provide people with a reasonable and fair amount of time to evaluate the information presented and to provide informed decisions. It should also be sensitive to community values in that it should be carried in a manner that makes everyone feel included.
Value Based System
Integrity in leadership cultivates good governance, justice, democracy, and the rule of law (Alam et al., 2018). The value-based system in public administration leadership involves leaders drawing upon their own and others’ values for motivation and direction. The value-based system involves leaders being motivated by values and living according to such beliefs. It is important that the leader and their public organization understand their values, work together to identify the right values for the public institution, and using the motivation to lead forward toward the desired future state (Carfagno, 2019). As such, value-based system of leadership inspires employees through a set of values allowing them to improve their cohesiveness and willingness to work to achieve state objectives.
Value-based system of leadership involves having clear principles and being true to oneself, as well as truly inspiring other civil servants (Kuşakçı, & Busatlic, 2021). Leaders using this system of governance lean on values to drive performance and ensure they lead others to working with integrity, especially during time of change. Value-based system of leadership manifests the organizational ethos, which articulates values and culture. Everything civil servants do is guided by the organizational ethos since leaders stand for enlightenment regarding what their departments stand for (Carfagno, 2019). Values guide every activity in the public institution, from selection and recruitment to decision-making. In a value-based system, leaders communicate the values that they want followed by all members of the organization.
It is evident that leaders who talk values in ways that connects with workers’ values help such workers identify strongly with both the institution and its mission (Kuşakçı, & Busatlic, 2021). They focus on core values, which represent an institution’s soul. It triggers integrity in leadership as the leader oversees the team members’ ability to execute functions and be accountable for their roles. As such, value-based system of leadership features the behavior that are engrained in moral and ethical foundations, such as authentic, servant, spiritual, and transformational leadership. The principles of value-based system of leadership include self-reflection, balance, true self-confidence, and genuine humility (Carfagno, 2019).
A leader must exhibit the ability to pinpoint and reflect on what they stand for, their values, and what matters most to them (Carfagno, 2019). To be a value-based leader, they must be willing to look within themselves through regular self-reflection and seek for greater self-awareness. Balance involves the ability to look at situations through different angles and viewpoints to attain their full understanding. Therefore, a leader driven by value-based system must consider all angles and opinion with an open mind. With true self-confidence, the leader understands their strengths and weaknesses and seeks to continually improve. Genuine humility stems from not forgetting where one has come from and helps the leaders to value each worker (Carfagno, 2019).
Value-based leadership involves taking each day at a time to reflect on their motivations and decisions. As such, they get the chance to reevaluate their values, and ascertain their purpose in leadership and integrity matters. Strong leaders assess themselves, which starts with open feedback from peers and senior leaders (Kuşakçı, & Busatlic, 2021). This helps them identify and address any blind spots in decision-making, engagement, and communication. It is through value-based system that leaders integrate diversity of thought from different employees and leverage the core values of decision-making. To ensure integrity in leadership, it is crucial to utilize value-based system to improve communication, entrench stronger relationships, and attain high level of performance.
Social Change
Even with emphasis on leadership and integrity in public administration, the idea of civil servants acting as agents of social change can be problematic (Nagda, 2019). Civil servants are not elected, which leads to the notion that they serve the interests of the politicians and the wealthy and powerful. However, it is the responsibility of all public servants to act as agents of change in the systems and institutions they serve. Since public professionals might be tempted to use organizational resources and administrative discretion to shift public goods, for example, safety, infrastructure, and education to undeserved quarters, it is important to have leaders with integrity at the helm of public service (Bezio, & Yost, 2018).
Social change is defined as the idea of bringing about or altering conditions to boost human welfare. However, social change may have both positive and negative social impacts, which should be addressed by the leaders in public administration. As such, legislation should support the dynamics of social change to safeguard the interests and needs of the communities (Taylor, 2017). This is possible through leadership and integrity with implementation of service delivery requiring solid and reliable law enforcement to public bureaucracy functions to allow people to feel the benefits of service delivery. Since the internet is a good source of information, leaders should embrace it to effect knowledge and citizen participation in leadership, integrity, and governance issues (Nagda, 2019).
The public service practitioners who are willing or in a position to act as agents of social change are few. It is in positions, such as boundary-spanning jobs that workers may be accountable to act as agents of social change since they are close to the people and there are technical positions that provide opportunities to shape decisions through information (Bezio, & Yost, 2018). Acting as an agent of social change would entail advocacy regarding gathering information to bridge the gap between professional knowledge and relevant bodies of governance. It would entail aggregating the interests concerning the public policy agenda, public discourse, and decisions for adopting policies and feedback for leading policy modification.
The leader would need to formulate a recommendation for change with an ultimate decision-maker, such as cabinet secretary or someone from the state legislature or the local level (Taylor, 2017). The goal of the social equity should outweigh the probable implications. Acting as an agent of social change in public administration requires one to provide information to the public, which is in line with leadership and integrity. This is critical to spanning the institution’s boundary and linking with the public. Knowledge acquisition can present risks; however, it is important to provide the public with enough information regarding the current conditions, alternative futures, and best practices (Nagda, 2019).
Further, it is crucial to provide meaningful access to policy processes by ensuring that people have access to relevant information about how they are governed or how public resources are being utilized (Taylor, 2017). At times, elected leaders may view citizen participation as a threat to their interests. It is important to ensure that participatory processes and settings are open and transparent, which requires advocacy and persuasion, as well as risking opposition and failure (Bezio, & Yost, 2018). Therefore, acting as agents of social change in the public sector requires change creation, collaboration, and civic leadership. This involves emphasizing the need for leader-followers who focus on promoting the good of their society and community.
Conclusion
The promotion of leadership and integrity entails ensuring that the people selected to leadership positions in the public sector have an integrity profile and supporting them to execute their functions as integrity leaders. The government can ensure that integrity leadership is recognized as a train in leadership, the selection and recruitment process attract people of high integrity, and accountability and incentive frameworks promote and reward leaders who show integrity. Civil servants must act in a manner that avoids any demeaning of the office or its holder, compromises public interests in favor of selfish personal interests, or conflicts with their official duties. Leadership and integrity provide a platform for civil servants to act as agents of social change by offering the people a chance to participate in leadership fora in open and transparent settings (Hamoudah et al., 2021).
Citizen participation, social change, and value-based leadership are critical elements of integrity leadership. Citizen participation should be incorporated in public service to allow people to air their decisions and grievances to the government officials to ensure resources are used the way they should without favor and unaccountability. Citizen participation, thus involves the promotion of integrity and credibility in public organizations where it helps build public confidence and create a sense of neutrality. Leadership and integrity require leaders to show their ability to pinpoint and reflect on what they stand for and what matters to them through value-based leadership. Value-based leadership requires self-reflection, balance, true self-confidence, and genuine humility. Acting as agents of social change requires change creation, collaboration, and civic leadership.
References
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Taylor, K. (2017). The social change model of leadership development: A service-learning reflection. The International Undergraduate Journal for Service-Learning, Leadership, and Social Change, 7(1), 34-40.
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