Administrative Courage and the Paradox of Conformity in Public Administration
Administrative Courage and the Paradox of Conformity in Public Administration

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary public administration operates in an environment marked by institutional complexity, procedural pressure, ethical ambiguity, and growing expectations regarding transparency, accountability, and innovation. In such settings, the capacity of public professionals to act courageously becomes increasingly relevant, particularly when formal compliance may conflict with broader responsibilities toward the public interest.Although courage has received growing attention in organizational research, the public administration literature still addresses it only fragmentarily, most often in relation to whistleblowing, ethical leadership, or individual traits. Limited attention has been given tohow courage is perceived and enacted in everyday bureaucratic settings and to the organizational conditions that enable or inhibit such behavior.Against this background, this study aims to explore how public administration professionals understand and experience administrative courage, with a particular focus on the forms of courage they identify, the risks associated with courageous action, and the institutional factors shaping its manifestation. The research adopts a qualitative design based on thematic content analysis of open-ended responses collected from experienced civil servants in the Romanian public sector. The empirical material was analyzed with the support of NVivo software through an iterative coding process involving open, axial, and selective coding.The findings indicate that administrative courage is perceived as a multidimensional phenomenon, with moral and spiritual courage occupying a central place in respondents’narratives, while intellectual and interpersonal courage appear less frequently. The analysis also identifies a “Paradox of Conformity,” referring to situations in which strict adherenceto formal rules functions as a substitute for ethical engagement and discourages responsible administrative intervention. The study adds value by advancing administrative courage as an organizationally embedded construction and by linking it to institutional conformity,public integrity, and administrative innovation. The main beneficiaries of the research are scholars in public administration, public managers, human resource professionals, and institutions interested in strengthening ethical climates and responsible decision-making.The main limitation derives from the qualitative design and small sample size, which do not allow statistical generalization. Future research may develop comparative, longitudinal, and mixed-method investigations to examine how organizational culture and psychological safety influence courageous administrative action.

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