Abstract
The aim of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the factors that underlie public officials’ engagement in corruption. Given the significant public interest, we gained permission from the Dutch Ministry of Justice to analyze multiple confidential criminal files of cases in which Dutch public officials took bribes from private companies. Extending previous research, we analyzed three types of factors, individual factors, organizational factors, and factors related to the relationships between corrupt officials and their bribers. Moreover, for the first time, we considered the interplay between these three types of factors. The results suggest that public officials’ engagement in bribery is rooted in a combination of individual, organizational and relationship variables that influence and reinforce each other, creating a toxic mix. This implies that the battle against bribery can be fought on multiple fronts, whereby changing one critical factor may cause the mix to lose its toxicity.
Highlights
A public official who takes bribes from private companies in exchange for awarding favorable contracts puts government decisions ‘up for sale’
To gain a better in-depth understanding of the factors underlying the engagement of Dutch public officials in corruption and bribery we conduct a case-study analysis
We analyzed unique information from extensive confidential criminal files of bribery cases to explore the role of three types of factors, while for the first time considering the interplay between these different factors
Summary
A public official who takes bribes from private companies in exchange for awarding favorable contracts puts government decisions ‘up for sale’. The vast majority of empirical research has focused on finding explanations for corruption on the national level [3, 4]. While such studies may provide insight into why corruption is widespread in some countries and less prevalent in others, they do not explain variations within countries. The goal of this study is to address this gap in the literature, by providing an answer to the following research question: which individual, organizational and relationship factors may explain why public officials engage in real-life corruption, and how do these factors separately play a role in corruption, as well as in combination?
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