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Unethical leadership represents one of the most serious obstacles to the development of organizations and societies. Although a range of empirical studies have investigated unethical leadership behaviour in different contexts, studies on this issue are almost non-existent within the Algerian context. This study aims to explore the role of social and organizational factors in shaping unethical leadership behaviour within Algerian public organizations.

A series of in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 leaders from public organizations. The collected data were analysed using a thematic approach with ATLAS.ti 8 software.

The reported social and organizational factors fall into five themes: social values, organizational culture, corruption, peer influence and political environment.

Given the grave consequences of unethical leadership behaviour, this study contributes to our understanding of the role of social and organizational factors in shaping unethical leadership behaviour in an understudied context. This can help in mitigating the factors that lay the ground for these destructive and unethical behaviours in public organizations.