Misconduct as a Behavioural Driver of Public Service Inefficiency: Evidence From Maldivian Civil Service

Public service inefficiency remains a persistent governance challenge despite extensive administrative reforms aimed at improving accountability, performance, and service delivery. While inefficiency has traditionally been explained through structural and managerial deficiencies, growing scholarship suggests that behavioural factors play an equally important role in shaping organisational performance. This study examines how misconduct functions as a behavioural determinant of public service inefficiency within the Maldivian Civil Service. The findings reveal that misconduct translates into inefficiency through multiple interconnected pathways, including workflow disruption, administrative bottlenecks, resource leakage, supervisory overload, organisational fragmentation, employee disengagement, weak accountability, and erosion of institutional trust. The study further demonstrates that misconduct is sustained by relational governance, politicisation, inconsistent disciplinary enforcement, and perceived organisational injustice, which collectively weaken organisational performance and service delivery. Theoretically, the study contributes to public administration scholarship by conceptualising misconduct not merely as an ethical or legal problem but as a behavioural governance mechanism that systematically produces inefficiency. Empirically, it provides evidence from a Small Island Developing State, a context that remains underrepresented in governance research. The study concludes that efforts to improve public service efficiency must extend beyond structural reforms and address the behavioural, institutional, and cultural conditions that sustain misconduct within public administration.