The behaviours of both top- and middle-level managers matter for promoting open organisational cultures, mitigating integrity risks and fostering ethical behaviour by their staff. This report examines key issues around integrity leadership in Brazil’s federal public administration, based on an extensive survey of senior public officials. Informed and inspired by behavioural insights, it provides concrete recommendations for strengthening integrity leadership in Brazil.
Strengthening Integrity Leadership in Brazil’s Federal Public Administration
Applying Behavioural Insights for Public Integrity
OECD Public Governance Reviews
Abstract
Executive Summary
The behaviours of both top and middle level managers are instrumental in promoting open organisational cultures and mitigating integrity risks. Leaders, especially middle managers because of their day-to-day proximity to most public servants, can enable ethical behaviour by all employees and, in particular, by their direct teams.
Building on OECD work on leadership in the federal public administration of Brazil, this report focuses on integrity leadership through a behavioural lens. It follows the BASIC methodology developed by the OECD (BASIC stands for Behaviour, Analysis, Strategy, Intervention, Change), a five-step methodology that provides guidance to policymakers on the steps to apply behavioural insights systematically when designing policy interventions. The report draws on interviews, focus groups and a survey administered by the OECD and the Comptroller General of the Union (CGU) to 5 889 Brazilian senior civil servants. Concrete recommendations are provided, informed and inspired by behavioural insights, on how Brazil could strengthen integrity leadership behaviour in its federal public administration.
Main findings
Recent reforms have been implemented in Brazil to clarify and consolidate the senior civil service system. However, despite improvements, there is still scope to strengthen integrity leadership, including specific actions to address the lack of systematic merit-based criteria and procedures to select and appoint senior civil servants, the absence of explicit references to integrity in the competences for leaders’ framework and the lack of periodic and systematic assessment of senior public servants’ performance.
Both the demand for and offer of integrity training targeting high-ranked officials is limited across the Brazilian federal administration. The OECD-CGU survey revealed that only 55% of respondents have participated in ethics-related training over the two years preceding the survey. This contrasts with a high interest in participating in such a training, with 68% of respondents having indicated interest in such trainings. Moreover, a previous survey by the World Bank and the CGU revealed that only 36% of civil servants consider that their leaders regularly promote and raise awareness about integrity, showing the need to encourage leader’s dual role as models and managers of integrity.
Challenges remain to effectively promote an open organisational culture in the Brazilian federal administration. For instance, the OECD-CGU survey revealed that 33.7% of respondents reported having difficulty communicating about integrity within their teams and 54.7% in engaging in conversations regarding integrity concerns in their institutions.
A previous survey by the World Bank and the CGU revealed that civil servants do not feel safe enough to report misconduct, with only 12% of civil servants having reported corruption in the three years preceding the survey, although a third of civil servants had witnessed unethical practices. This suggests the need to strengthen protection mechanisms and promote a safe environment for reporting misconduct.
When differentiating by gender, female high-ranked officials expressed higher levels of discomfort with both discussing misbehaviour and reporting cases of corruption than their male counterparts. For instance, while 65% of female surveyed consider it “hard” or “very hard” to discuss misbehaviour at the institutional level, 49% of their male peers expressed similar levels of discomfort. These findings from the OECD-CGU survey suggest the relevance of including a gender lens in Brazil’s integrity policies. Designing and implementing gender-specific integrity policies could effectively contribute to an open organisational culture.
The OECD-CGU survey shows that leaders of the Brazilian federal administration value and are aware of the benefits of an open dialogue with their employees for handling unethical issues and concerns, especially when compared to a leadership style based on an “iron fist and setting clear boundaries”. Such awareness is a good starting point for initiatives aimed at strengthening an open organisational culture.
Main recommendations
Brazil could start by implementing the following two measures aimed at enabling an environment more favourable to the development of integrity leadership:
The Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services, in co-ordination with the CGU and the National School of Public Administration (ENAP), could more explicitly include integrity in the competence for leaders and provide for periodical performance evaluations of senior civil servants. For the latter, the Ministry of Management and Innovation in Public Services could consider the main conclusions derived from the leadership performance assessment pilot conducted in the former Ministry of Economy in 2020.
The CGU could measure dimensions of integrity leadership through a regular staff survey to better understand where different federal public institutions stand with respect to integrity leadership and to monitor progress and the impact of specific interventions in public officials’ perceptions and behaviours.
To further strengthen integrity leadership in Brazil, the following three–step strategy could be implemented across public institutions of the federal administration:
Step 1: Identification. The Integrity Management Units (UGIs) within each public entity of the Federal Executive Branch could identify a set of leaders as internal allies. At entity level, these could become the link between UGIs and civil servants by sharing knowledge and information on integrity and as role models that civil servants could follow and be inspired by.
Step 2: Training. The CGU and the ENAP could together develop guidance on how to promote an open organisational culture and provide integrity leadership training for senior civil servants aimed at developing skills and capacities needed to become integrity leaders. Moreover, the CGU could partner with the ENAP and the UGIs to develop a specific and more intensive mentoring and training programme for the leaders identified in step 1. This training could also be tailored to each entity following a risk-based approach. Considering the gender specific results of the OECD-CGU survey, the UGIs should encourage equal opportunities to participate in these training and include a gender lens in the training programme.
Step 3: Networking. The CGU could initiate and promote a network amongst the identified leaders to facilitate exchange of experiences, promote peer learning and enable alliances across the federal administration. In addition to promoting peer support, such a network could become a key ally for the CGU in mainstreaming public integrity across the Brazilian federal administration.
