When uncertainty expands discretion: integrity and opportunism as competing bureaucratic response

Task-environment uncertainty is a persistent feature of public administration, yet its effects on bureaucratic behaviour remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on the discretion dimension of street-level bureaucracy, this study examines bureaucratic discretion as the mechanism through which uncertainty shapes bureaucratic responses and public service performance. Using an interpretive qualitative approach, the study draws on 26 semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis conducted across provincial, district, and municipal government organisations in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. The findings show that uncertainty arising from regulatory ambiguity, fiscal instability, and political intervention expands bureaucratic discretion. Within this expanded discretionary space, bureaucrats respond through two competing forms of behavioural adaptation. Integrity-based adaptation supports service continuity, accountability, and professional standards, whereas opportunism-based adaptation encourages administrative deviation, procedural manipulation, and performance gaming. The findings further show that organisational leadership, accountability arrangements, and bureaucratic structure and culture influence which form of adaptation becomes dominant. The study contributes to public administration research by proposing an explanatory framework in which task-environment uncertainty influences performance indirectly through bureaucratic discretion and competing behavioural adaptations under different organisational and institutional conditions.