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This study aims to identify differences in knowledge-sharing mechanisms and personality among expert, typical and novice managers within the Malaysian public sector. Strengthening knowledge sharing function is essential for enabling public institutions around the world to be more productive.

This quantitative study involves 308 employees from management and professional groups within 98 local authorities in the Malaysian local government. Stratified random sampling techniques were used and the sampling frame comprised 1,000 staff using postal surveys. Data analyses were carried out using analysis of variance and correlations to test the research hypotheses.

The findings reveal that expert managers are more proactive in sharing their knowledge, particularly those with the personality traits of conscientiousness and openness. These two personality traits were also related to expert behaviours such as thoroughness, responsibility and persistence, which led to work competency and managerial success.

This study provides theoretical insights into how managerial tacit knowledge differs and can accumulate, depending on the personality traits of middle managers. The paper shows the different mechanisms of knowledge sharing, tacit knowledge and personality among expert, typical and novice managers. Practically, this study is important for guiding senior managers in their attempts to identify the most appropriate personalities of their middle managers. This study found that the expert group was higher in conscientiousness, openness and overall personality traits compared with the typical and novice groups. The paper also highlights the value of sharing managerial tacit knowledge effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study and contribute to the discussion of administrative ethics and integrity by investigating three ethical issues, namely trust, good governance and unethical actions in the Finnish public administration.

The evidence of this research is based on empirical data from a National Citizen Survey implemented in 2008 by the University of Vaasa. The questionnaire was sent to 5,000 Finnish citizens and the response rate was 40.4 percent.

The strength of the Finnish society concerning trust is that the citizens feel confident in public sector organizations and societal institutions. Even though serious corruption cases have remained few in Finland, there is still work to do in order to keep the situation under control. Ignorant and bad treatment of citizens occurs mostly in individual service encounters, it does not reflect the whole of the ethics of administration.

Further research is needed in order to investigate the societal background factors that can explain the different findings from the research questions. Also further research is required for comparing the results of different countries.

Strengths and weaknesses are identified as a tool for further research and for the work for practitioners.

The core contribution of the paper is a contribution to knowledge concerning citizens' perceptions of trust, good governance and unethical actions in an egalitarian society.

The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in the management of further education (FE) colleges in England following the Further and Higher Education Act (1992) and the removal of colleges from Local Education Authority control. These changes are mapped against developments in the management of public service organisations, more generally, labelled new public management (NPM), and the adoption of “business‐like” tools to support management responses to a new environment for colleges.

The paper draws upon a national survey of general FE colleges and four case studies, researched in depth through semi‐structured interviews and analysis of relevant documents. The research was carried out between 1997 and 2000. The case studies were revisited through recent Inspection reports.

The paper finds that colleges reacted differently to the imperatives of change and that the extent to which the prescriptions of NPM were acted out depended upon a range of factors that were not included in many configurations of NPM.

The research was carried out in the 1990s and the original cases were revisited through Inspection reports post 2002. The inspectors had a different agenda than the original researchers and care needs to be taken in utilising the Inspectors' reports.

The implementation of a uniform public policy across a diverse and complex sector is not guaranteed to succeed. Policy‐makers need to be aware of the “one‐size‐fits‐all” tendency of public policy making.

The management of the FE sector is under researched. This paper researches key issues for practitioners following on from education reform and provides empirical evidence for academics of the extent to which NPM reforms take hold on the ground.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of ethical leadership and ethical culture as a safeguard against corruption.

Using survey data from public managers in local authorities in The Netherlands, Serbia, Montenegro and the USA in a comparative study.

The USA and The Netherlands, generally, display higher levels of organizational integrity than Montenegro and Serbia. Second, the strongest effects of ethical leadership were found in Montenegro. Third, in all four countries a rule‐based approach to ethics dominated.

It is difficult to determine the extent to which survey participants felt free to express their true opinions. Different social values need to be included as part of any comparative analysis.

The role of ethical leadership is crucial; the importance of laws and rules underpinning ethical conduct cannot be underestimated.

The paper contributes to the growing interest in comparative studies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between public management reform and ethics management in the South African public service. A case study, the Department of Correctional Services, is used to illustrate the impact of reforms. The paper sets the foundation for further research and debate on the topic.

The paper is placed within the current theoretical discourse of corruption and its prevention. It is mainly the product of a literature review on the most recent publications on corruption and its prevention, as well as a survey of South African statutory and government publications and reports. With regard to the empirical research, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research approaches is used.

The paper is exploratory in nature. It sets the scene for further empirical research to determine the causal relationship between public management reform and ethics management in developing states. The haphazard implementation of management reform could lead to weaknesses in the management of ethics within the public service.

In addition to the evaluation of literature and a description of the most recent theoretical work on corruption, this paper aims to engage in substantial empirical research. This component of the research project, however, is at its initial stage.

The paper provides a starting point for debate on ethics management within developing states. Developing states, in particular, are subject to the negative consequences of corruption. It is argued that public management reform should be approached with caution, as it could have adverse consequences for the management of ethics.

This paper describes ethics management in the South African public service within the international discourse of public management reform. It explores the relationship between ethics management and the public management reform agenda, specifically within a context of developing states.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an analysis of official data on police misconduct, providing new insights into the nature and extent of police misconduct and in the official response to police misconduct. Next to the use of force and neglect of duty, private time misconduct is a major type of (alleged) misconduct although it is often discarded from theoretical conceptions of police misconduct. The analysis also showed that two‐thirds of internal investigations are the result of an internal report. This paper shows that official data on police misconduct can result in new insights in the nature and extent of police misconduct and is therefore a relevant source for academic analysis.

An analysis of official data on police misconduct is compared with theoretical notions of police misconduct, internal investigations and reliability of official data.

The implementation of a uniform Registration of Internal Investigations for all Dutch police forces has resulted in a clear increase in the number of registered investigations. This seems to be due to a combination of increased strictness on (alleged) misconduct and an improved quality of the registration. The analysis also showed that two‐thirds of the investigations are the result of an internal report. This places a new perspective on the so‐called code of silence among police officers. However, information on the extent and nature of complaints that are dealt with through the complaints procedure is lacking. The complaints procedure has also no formal relation with the disciplinary or criminal procedures.

Official data on police misconduct have to be viewed with a critical eye. The analyses showed however that the Dutch data seem fairly reliable. Additional research should place the official data in further perspective, e.g. through case studies and through a control of the registration with the files of the Bureaux of Internal Investigations. Finally, a comparison with official data in other countries is needed.

The Dutch police should improve its complaints procedures and the complaints registration.

Academic analysis of police misconduct is often limited to case studies of scandals or focuses on citizen complaints. The paper gives a broader perspective by using official data.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of new public management‐based reforms on public accountability in two countries, Italy and Sweden, explaining what strategies can be used to enhance accountability toward citizens.

Two case studies have been analysed in order to compare how public accountability has been enhanced in different cultural and geographical contexts.

In both countries, the enhancement of public accountability is at stake both in the political debate and in the public policies, but the strategies implemented resulted are path dependent especially in the choice between more disclosure and more citizen participation.

The paper uses only two case studies and therefore results can hardly be generalised; also the selected cases are both examples of best practice in the two countries.

The comparison offers critical insights on the adopted choices to enhance public accountability in two different contexts, also emphasising the role of IT and their possible use.

From a theoretical point of view, the paper offers an original framing of the possible strategies to improve accountability toward citizens: more accountability through more disclosure and more accountability through more citizen participation. The empirical analysis analyses the solutions adopted in two different countries aimed at improving accountability toward citizens and their advantages and limitations.