Abstract
Empirical research examining the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical pro-organisational behaviour (UPB) has yielded inconsistent findings, with studies reporting negative, positive, and curvilinear effects. This study addresses this theoretical ambiguity by investigating how ethical leadership is manifested within the institutional context of Pakistan’s public sector. Drawing on qualitative data from in-depth interviews (N=21) with public servants across multiple government departments, the study demonstrates that ethical leadership in politically embedded bureaucracies may be enacted in a fragmented form. Specifically, while leaders frequently display moral person aspect of ethical leadership in such environments, their capacity to exercise the moral manager dimension is often constrained by contextual factor such as political interference, dual authority structures, weak accountability systems, and patronage-based human resource practices. Grounded in Social Exchange Theory, the findings show that this partial enactment strengthens relational loyalty and reciprocity norms among subordinates, which may unintentionally increase engagement in UPB undertaken to protect leaders or safeguard organisational reputation. By theorising ethical leadership as institutionally contingent rather than universally coherent, this study offers a contextually grounded explanation for positive ethical leadership–UPB dynamics and advances a structurally sensitive understanding of leadership and unethical behaviour in public sector organisations.