The Korea Local Administration Review

One of the most important factors that determine the success or failure of digital government is 'data openness and sharing'. However, reliable high-quality data production must be premised before it. In particular, ensuring the production of high-quality data from local public officials, who are key players for the production of public data, is a key task to successfully lead digital government. This study focuses on the unethical behaviors of local public officials related to data production, in particular, the unethical behaviors of hiding or distorting information for the benefit of the organization to which they belong. And we examined the effect of leadership that can have a strong influence on members through various direct and indirect means and tools within the organization, and the effect of organization and members exchange as a context factor.
As a result of conducting a moderated regression analysis using survey data on public officials in local governments across the country, first, it was revealed that a fairly high proportion of local public officials actually have intentions to hide or distort information for the benefit of their own local government. Second, while transactional leadership works in the direction of strengthening members' UPB, transformational leadership initially works in the direction of strengthening members' UPB, but when it reaches a certain level, it rather works in the direction of reducing the UPB. Third, it was found that the economic exchange relationship between members and organizations not only directly increased UPB but also strengthened transactional leadership’s UPB inducing impact. Finally, the results of the analysis of the interaction between transformational leadership and the economic exchange relationship revealed that even a relatively low level of transformational leadership could have a UPB reduction effect in organizations with a high level of awareness of economic exchange.
The theoretical and practical implications derived from this study can contribute to laying the groundwork for building a digital government.