A compliance—integrity framework for ethics management: An empirical analysis of local government practice

This article examines two approaches to ethics management found in the literature: compliance‐based and integrity‐based, often called the low road and high road. It asks whether both approaches genuinely exist in practice as the literature suggests and whether they are distinct. Data were collected in a national survey of 764 International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs) on ethics management practices in their local government to find evidence of the approaches. A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis showed that CAOs use both compliance‐based ethics, focusing on enforceable rules, and integrity‐based ethics, concentrating on instilling values. Our confirmatory factor analysis showed that both approaches are used in practice, are separate and distinct, but that they are highly correlated. This implies that both approaches are needed to understand ethics management properly. The results challenge existing literature focusing on one approach being dominant and show that both ethics management systems are essential.