The paper analyzes the issues of legality and expediency of holding state and municipal employees disciplinarily liable for the occurrence of incidents and other negative phenomena within their area of responsibility. From the standpoint of organizational and legal effectiveness, the author examines the grounds for bringing employees to disciplinary responsibility, identifies the relationship between standard formulations of public officials’ duties and the occurrence of incidents, other negative phenomena, and the dynamics of growth in negative statistical reporting indicators. It is noted that in some cases there is an objective imputation where employees are held responsible for breaching their duties without proof of fault. The author identifies the following causes of this dysfunction: the element of discretion inherent in every public authority manager, the underdevelopment in Russian labor and administrative law of issues concerning the adequacy and legality of managerial measures, and the corporate ethics of government officials. Sometimes, for public officials, the expansion of the boundaries of administrative regulation turns from a means of managing public relations into an end in itself. To identify the causes of this defect in managerial activity, the study examines the historical prerequisites and corporate behavioral standards of the Russian bureaucracy, materials from judicial practice, and data from sociological and psychological research.