Integrity in Management of Public and Private Sector Organisations: Case of Serbia

Integrity in the sense of quality of personal character and organisational values in public administration and business are a major ongoing challenge all over the world, especially so in developing countries. We carried out an original empirical survey on this emerging topic on a sample of public and private sector managers in Serbia, measuring self-reported organisational values and their associations with integrity issues (violations, inefficiency and favouritism) within the organisation. Our findings indicate that there was notable sectoral convergence in organisational values in Serbia with only profitability differing significantly between the sectors. Using partial least squares structural equation modelling we showed that there were significantly more integrity violations in the public sector. Levels of inefficiency and favouritism were similar between the sectors. Public values were associated with a reduction in integrity violations but not a reduction in inefficiency or favouritism. More corrupt and/or nepotistic organisations were also significantly more inefficient. Many notable differences were observed between Serbian data and previous surveys in other European countries (Slovenia and the Netherlands) using the same instrument. These results were discussed in relation to the existing literature and suggestions for future work were offered.