Part 1: Why integrity matters in the public sector
The public sector in New Zealand is entrusted with wide-ranging powers. It is responsible for providing essential services that directly affect the lives of communities, hapū, iwi, whānau, families, and individuals.
This power comes with a responsibility to act lawfully and ethically. If this responsibility is not fulfilled, the legitimacy of the public sector can be undermined.
Trust in the public sector is essential for social cohesion and well-being because it underpins a government’s ability to govern. Trust enables governments to act without having to resort to coercion.1 Trust determines the levels of participation with public services and compliance with requirements. This ultimately provides public organisations with an ongoing social licence to operate.
This social licence to operate requires the day-to-day conduct of public servants to be grounded in service to the community. It also requires a high standard of behaviour.
People who access public services are directly affected by the integrity of the public organisations they engage with. This is especially so when power imbalances are more acute. That makes it important that public organisations demonstrate a genuine commitment to caring for and upholding the dignity of the people they serve.
The integrity of the public sector is not just about how an individual acts at a particular point in time. It is also about the collective actions of the public sector over the long term. Actions in the present are shaped by an organisation’s history and inform the organisation’s future direction.
This is particularly relevant to the longstanding Māori-Crown relationship. Māori report lower levels of trust in the public service than the general population.2 This is a legacy of Crown actions since Te Tiriti o Waitangi | The Treaty of Waitangi was signed. Restoring trust will require public organisations to work differently – and demonstrating integrity is a critical part of restoring trust.
Integrity in public organisations
Integrity is shaped by the context in which we live and operate. For public organisations, integrity is a personal and collective responsibility. It starts with ensuring that the decisions and actions of the people that make up the organisation, their use of resources, and their spending are consistent with the law and constitutional norms.3
Kia tika ō mahi (do the right thing)
Government department, Māori senior leader
However, integrity is more than complying with the law. It also requires public organisations to consistently operate in keeping with agreed or accepted ethical principles. Ethics is about values, and ethical behaviour reflects values held.4
For public organisations, there is an expectation they will operate with honesty and treat people fairly in all their activities, while being accountable, transparent, and accepting responsibility for their actions.5 Integrity also requires investing in relationships that are based on mutual trust, respect, and care.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Māori values of tika, pono, and aroha can inform and guide ethical behaviour. These three concepts are inextricably connected with one another. The behaviours demonstrated when pono are honesty, fairness, and sincerity. These ways of being both create and build trust. The behaviours demonstrated when tika include just and appropriate ways of behaving and acting with clear and defensible processes. Aroha speaks to the quality of relationships through showing respect and acting with compassion.6
When considered together, they can be interpreted as doing the right thing with honesty and compassion.7
Organisational culture and integrity
The culture of an organisation influences people’s behaviour and determines how integrity in an organisation is understood and practiced. An organisation’s culture is determined by how systems, norms, and values interact, which influences the observable actions people take based on their decisions.
Public organisations are made up of people making decisions every day about what actions to take. These decisions can range from the mundane to the most important. To build organisational integrity, these decisions need to be informed by the organisation’s purpose, values, and New Zealand’s constitutional framework.8
Workplace culture is … the gap between what we are saying and what we are doing. The behavior that’s tolerated – not your words – determines the real culture.”
Gustavo Razzetti, Culture is the behavior you reward and punish
This means that people need to stop and think about whether the decisions they make are aligned with what the organisation stands for.
There are many factors that can disconnect an organisation’s stated purpose and values from the day-to-day decisions and behaviours of their people. These factors include:
- the actions of senior management and governors;
- the tone and content of formal and informal communications;
- how easy it is to understand a policy and why the policy matters;
- how safe people feel about calling out wrongdoing; and
- how leaders hold themselves and others accountable for poor behaviour.
The actions of the most senior staff and the content of their online and in-person communications determine what is often called “the tone from the top”.
1 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013), Government at a glance 2013, page 21,
at oecd-ilibrary.org
2: See the Kiwis Count survey at publicservice.govt.nz.
3: This definition of organisational integrity builds upon the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s thinking on public integrity, and was adapted from the Blavatnik School of Government’s ‘Public institutional integrity’ defined, at bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/building-integrity.
4: Hudson, M (2010), Te Ara Tika Guidelines for Māori research ethics: A framework for researchers and ethics committee members.
5: These reflect the five values in the in Public Service Act 2020. They are also common concepts expected in public sector organisations in other countries. See, for example, Denhardt, J V and Denhardt, R B (2015), The New Public Service: Serving, Not Steering (4th edition) and the United Kingdom guidance “The seven principles of public life” (also known as the Nolan principles) at gov.uk.
6: See Ministry of Social Development (2023), He tūtohu nā Ngā Mātanga Māori: Advice from the Māori Advisory Group, at msd.govt.nz.
7: Stewart, G, Smith, V, Diamond, P, Paul, N, and Hogg, R (2021), “Ko te Tika, ko te Pono, ko te Aroha: Exploring Māori values in the university”, Te Kaharoa, Vol. 14, No. 1, at tekaharoa.com.
8: See the “Ethics Unboxed” resources at ethics.org.au.