Ethics and Integrity in a Public Sector Organisation in Malaysia: An Assessment of Understanding and Perception of the Employees

Abstract

The formation of quality work culture in the organization will only be achieved if employees practice a comprehensive and positive work ethic and integrity. In order to improve the level of ethics and integrity, the focus should be on overall improvement in the organization not only at the grassroots but all up to the top level. Comprehensive involvement of all parties will significantly improve the integrity of the organization. Recognizing the importance of integrity as the core of quality staff development and higher organizational performance, this study is expected to help the public sector organization plan strategies to achieve a higher level of ethics and integrity. The corporate Integrity Assessment Questionnaire (CIAQ) was used to measure the implementation of the integrity system in a public sector organization. The questionnaires were distributed to 850 employees at the agency via e-survey. It was found that the level of ethics and integrity of the agency is at 74%.  “Vision and goals” dimension shows the highest score which shows that the organization has given attention to ethics and integrity through its approach to ethics and integrity in the organization, including, its formal articulation of the underlying philosophy about ethical and moral conduct embedded by the organization. The lowest score of the “disciplinary action and reward” dimension indicates that the public sector organization needs to relook policies and guidelines for discipline and reward so that it is in line with best practice. Thus, the public sector organization needs to provide rewards and incentives to encourage ethical conduct and implement strict disciplinary action to punish unethical work conduct improve in terms of ethical communication, work culture, infrastructure, training and ethics education, discipline, and reward.