Organizational Corruption Research Articles

Corruption and Unethical Behavior in Public Sector Organizations: A Specific Test of Social Learning Theory

Corruption and Unethical Behavior in Public Sector Organizations: A Specific Test of Social Learning Theory

"The Roles of Power, Status, and Culture in Organizational Corruption"

To better understand organizational corruption, this paper investigates different roles of power and status in affecting corruption from the perspective of common interest. According to social exchange theory and entitlement theory, as well as the cultural construal of relationships, we put forward competing hypotheses to explore the influence of individuals’ status position on their corrupt behavior in organization. To test these hypotheses, we designed a four-condition (high-power vs. low- power á high-status vs. low-status) scenario study and tested it in different cultural contexts. Our results show an interacting effect of power and status on corruption that varies by culture. Specifically, in the Chinese cultural context, low-status leaders with high power are more likely to engage in corrupt behavior, whereas high-status leaders with high power are more likely to do so in a Western cultural context. These findings expand the theoretical research about power, status and corruption, and provide practical insights on managing organizational corruption.

Corruption in Educational Organizations: Concept and Characteristics

Corruption in Educational Organizations: Concept and Characteristics

Sand their wheels? The case of exporting SMEs in africa

There is a strong belief that country and firm competitiveness are strongly linked to international trade. This is usually an economic justification for governments in developing contexts to promote policy mechanisms that enhance the performance of exporting companies, such as for example cluster associations. Clusters can produce significant benefits to SMEs willing to innovate and compete in international markets. This research assesses the effect on African SME productivity of exporting and the influence of clusters on this relationship. This issue is researched using a cross-sectional survey of 1,363 SMEs located in 9 African countries with additional analysis of a statistically matched sub-sample of 292 exporting and 292 non-exporting SMEs for robustness. Our results indicate that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters, but are counter-intuitive concerning the role clusters play in this relationship - primarily that cluster membership may not improve exporting firm performance as predicted. Our evidence suggests this may be due high levels of perceived corruption in African public organisations.

When allegedly corrupt organizations are attractive

Purpose– Based on social identity theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore how detrimental allegations of corruption are to potential applicants’ organizational attraction and how potential harm can be absorbed by choosing an appropriate response strategy.Design/methodology/approach– Experimental survey data were collected from 239 German employees likely to be in the job market again in their careers.Findings– Potential applicants are less attracted to allegedly corrupt organizations. Accepting the allegation and undertaking structural change, appealing to higher organizational goals, and denying the allegation appear to be effective organizational response strategies. A strategy concordant with the one potential applicants would choose if they themselves were confronted with an allegation of corruption fosters attraction.Research limitations/implications– The experimental design limits external validity. Future research should investigate whether the findings hold in a field setting where additional information about the organization and the potential job is available.Practical implications– The findings demonstrate the need for organizational corruption prevention efforts. If organizations face allegations of corruption, they should carefully consider how to respond, what they signal by the chosen response strategy, and what applicants they are therefore likely to attract.Social implications– The observed interactions between organizations and individuals underline the need for societal efforts in creating a societal anti-corruption climate.Originality/value– The study highlights the critical role of allegations of corruption, organizational response strategies, and concordance with individual response strategies regarding potential applicants’ organizational attraction.

The Astronomy of Africa's Health Systems Literature During the MDG Era: Where Are the Systems Clusters?

Growing international concern about the need for improved health systems in Africa has catalyzed an expansion of the health systems literature. This review applies a bibliometric procedure to analyze the acceleration of scientific writing on this theme. We focus on research published during the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era between 1990 and 2014, reporting findings from a systematic review of a database comprised of 17,655 articles about health systems themes from sub-Saharan African countries or subregions. Using bibliometric tools for co-word textual analysis, we analyzed the incidence and associations of keywords and phrases to generate and visualize topical foci on health systems as clusters of themes, much in the manner that astronomers represent groupings of stars as galaxies of celestial entities. The association of keywords defines their relative position, with the size of images weighted by the relative frequency of terms. Sets of associated keywords are arrayed as stars that cluster as "galaxies" of concepts in the knowledge universe represented by health systems research from sub-Saharan Africa. Results show that health systems research is dominated by literature on diseases and categorical systems research topics, rather than on systems science that cuts across diseases or specific systemic themes. Systems research is highly developed in South Africa but relatively uncommon elsewhere in the region. "Black holes" are identified by searching for terms in our keyword library related to terms in widely cited reviews of health systems. Results identify several themes that are unexpectedly uncommon in the country-specific health systems literature. This includes research on the processes of achieving systems change, the health impact of systems strengthening, processes that explain the systems determinants of health outcomes, or systematic study of organizational dysfunction and ways to improve system performance. Research quantifying the relationship of governance indicators to health systems strengthening is nearly absent from the literature. Long-term experimental studies and statistically rigorous research on cross-cutting themes of health systems strengthening are rare. Studies of organizational malaise or corruption are virtually absent. Trend analysis shows the emergence of organizational research on specific priority diseases, such as on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, but portrays a lack of focus on integrated systems research on the general burden of disease. If health systems in Africa are to be strengthened, then organizational change research must be a more concerted focus in the future than has been the case in the past.

Market Efficiency and Organizational Corruption: Study on the Impact on Shareholder Value

With this study, we evaluated the influence of disclosure of the involvement of organizations in corruption on creating value for shareholders. We chosen four companies that had their names linked to allegations of corruption in the past 10 years. An event study was used to verify if relevant information tends to be immediately reflected in stock prices. We selected 28 events for analysis and we observed negative and positive variations of the securities in relation to the market, in the days before the disclosure, as in most of the 20 days after publication. However, in cumulative terms, there was a rise in prices over time, returning to levels near those observed before advertising the event. The results indicate that the market did not behave efficiently in this analyzed period.

Economic Criminal Acts according to Criminal Code of Republic of Kosovo

This article analyses the criminal offences against economy in the Criminal Code of Kosovo, which are increasingly becoming an important object of study, both at national and international levels. The criminal offences against economy are in principle blanket nature offences, guiding nature, since the vast majority of such norms are further delineated in other bylaws, while the criminal code provisions provide on criminal offences, thereby guiding towards another legal or sub-legal provision. Economic and financial crimes in Kosovo are already making a remarkable increase, as proven by statistical records of state authorities. The increased rate of economic crimes is a result of many factors and circumstances present in Kosovo, which may be different from regional countries. The inefficient fight and prevention of organized crime and corruption in the period between 1999-2010 was stimulated and favoured by several specific factors that are elaborated in this article.

Commitments, Disrupted: Understanding and Addressing Commitment Drift in For-Profit Enterprises

Businesses frequently make promises and commitments to employees, customers, investors and civil society as a means to secure resources or obtain cooperation. Many of these commitments are made on behalf of the business as an organization, as if it were a moral actor. Yet evidence suggests that businesses do not have a strong track record for keeping commitments and broken commitments contribute to stakeholder distrust. Though historical explanations emphasize the role of “bad apples” or old-fashioned personal greed and static individual traits above all, recent work on institutional and organizational corruption suggests that “bad barrels” or individual-, interpersonal-, and group-level factors may also be at play. Yet even these views are relatively narrow, which has led to “a relative neglect of the role of processes and systems” in creating corruption. Separate bodies of research suggest that unclear or ambiguous commitments or failures in “connecting the dots” across organizations can also contribute to “commitment drift.” We therefore argue for the inclusion of “weak commitments” and disconnected dots as two additional sources of institutional and organizational corruption. Given these four possible causes, we argue that keeping organizational commitments may be harder than it first appears, and that developing commitment-keeping competence could help companies advance their own interests as well as build trust with other stakeholders. In this paper, we report on a project to develop and pilot two tools for diagnosing “commitment drift” and building commitment-keeping competence: a Commitment Scorecard and a Commitment-Keeping Employee Survey. We draw on an 18-month multi-methods study with a U.S.-based global Fortune 500 company whose CEO had committed to keeping promises as an explicit business strategy, where we piloted the Survey and Scorecard. We begin by outlining a working causal model of commitment drift. We then analyze the Employee Survey and Commitment Scorecard pilot results, and present implications for future study.

Survey of Personality Traits (Based on Big Five) In Professional Ethics's Growth In Medical Sciences University of Bushehr. Iran's Aspect

Professional ethics of employees is an effective Factor in the growth of spirituality and reducing administrative corruption in organizations. One factor that influences employees on Professional Ethics is personality. The overall goal of this research is to study the link between personalities of employees (Neuroticism, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to experience) and their Professional ethics (responsibility, Competitiveness, honestly, respect to others, respect to values, justice, Sympathy to others, Loyalty) in Medical Sciences University of Bushehr. To study the correlation between personality style and Professional ethics of employees, five hypotheses were proposed in this project and the objective was to find the ones that were supported by the collected and analyzed data. Two sets of questionnaires titled “Form NEO five factors personality test” and “Professional ethics” questionnaires were distributed among 270 employees. Population of this research was 690 employees. The sorted data was analyzed using in SPSS and Lisrel software. While designed to test the hypothesis, based on the results, Findings show that, Between personality traits and PE, there is a positive relationship (0.445), Between personality traits and PE, there is a negative relationship(- 0 .251) some recommendations for developing Professional ethics in the organization, as is the end of the study

Establishing the Normative Standards that Determine Deviance in Organizational Corruption: Is Corruption Within Organizations Antisocial or Unethical?

Despite universal agreement that corruption is norm-deviant, the criteria required to ascertain deviance remain elusive. The problem is even more pronounced for organizational corruption, not least because the construct remains somewhat ambiguous and is often conflated with proximate management constructs like antisocial or unethical organizational behavior. In this article, I identify the suitable criteria for the determination of deviance in organizational corruption and determine whether it is, indeed, antisocial or unethical. In order to minimize ambiguity, I first limit the scope of organizational corruption to corruption within, rather than by, organizations, which is most conceptually challenging insofar as the aforementioned questions are concerned. I then conclude that organizational corruption should be specified solely with respect to the focal organization’s normative framework; it is anti-organizational rather than antisocial. Higher level normative prescriptions that arise from the organization’s embedding within its social context remain relevant, but only insofar as they are incorporated within the organization’s normative framework. Moreover, I argue that organizational corruption is not necessarily unethical, since the moral evaluation of an organizational act is, in principle, distinct from the determination of its deviance to organizational norms.

Human factor, justice and organizational effectiveness in Africa

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the human factor (HF), organizational justice and the interaction between the two on individual employees’ perceptions of the effectiveness with which their organizations undertake activities in two sub-Saharan African countries.Design/methodology/approach– Survey data were collected from two samples containing public sector and private sector organizations from two sub-Saharan African economies – Ghana (n=158) and Uganda (n=208). Hierarchical regression analysis was utilized to analyze the survey data from the two countries separately.Findings– The HF dimensions of moral capital and human capabilities, and organizational justice were related to individual employees’ perceptions of the effectiveness of their organizations in both studies. In particular, higher perceptions of organizational justice at the workplace enhanced the impact of the HF dimensions of moral capital and human capabilities on individual employees’ perceptions of the effectiveness with which their organizations perform activities.Practical implications– Organizations in sub-Saharan Africa should emphasize the development of the HF qualities that focus on moral capital and the utilization and application of the knowledge, skills and abilities embedded in employees at the workplace. In particular, moral capital could play a critical role in ameliorating counter-productive attitudes and behaviors such as shirking, bribery and corruption in organizations. Moreover organizations in sub-Saharan Africa can improve their effectiveness by developing fair decision-making procedures and interactions between management/supervisors and subordinates.Originality/value– The study provides the first empirical investigation of the link between the HF and perceived effectiveness of organizations, and how organizational justice moderates this relationship in a sub-Saharan African environment.

Believe, But Verify? The Effect of Market Structure on Corruption in Religious Organizations

SummaryThis first cross‐country analysis of the causes of corruption in religious organizations provides evidence in support of policy recommendations by Adam Smith. He argued that clergy are best constrained by competition among religious groups. Their appointment and promotion should, however, be regulated by the state. Both factors are shown to confine corruption. In contrast, David Hume's approach of supporting state religion and limiting entry into the religious market is not a promising strategy for mitigating religious corruption. More generally, these results suggest that the private sector may indeed be shielded from sprawling corruption as long as markets are sufficiently competitive.

Corruption as individual and organizational sinking

The article qualifies the nature of psychosociological perspective in analysing corruption in organizations. Corruption is analysed as a mental event and social conditions of corruption are investigated. In particular six social and organizational factors are identified as relevant in determining the diffusion of corruption: meaning, work wellbeing, consistency, social recognition, reflexivity, social relations. The main hypothesis explored in the article is that to take managerial care of the organisational factors above mentioned is a strong and active prevention of the risk of corruption.

An Eventful Interactionist Approach to Organizational Corruption

In this paper I address the plea for a deep and long view of organizational corruption put forth by Ashforth and colleagues (2008) by proposing a novel eventful way to approach corruption as ...

Institutional theory for explaining corruption: An empirical study on public sector organizations in China and Indonesia

Many researches on corruption examined macro factors such decentralization, political democracy, press freedom, and economic freedom, as shown by Lecuna (2012), Alexeef and Habodazzova, (2012) and Goel and Nelson (2005). However, there are limited studies on corruption that examine this topic from organizational approach. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate existing institutional theories describing corrupt behaviour in Asian public sector organizations. A total of 171 questionnaires were distributed to public service officers who were currently enrolled as accounting postgraduate students in both China and Indonesia. The results support the institutional theoretical model used to explain corruption in public sector organizations. However, cultural differences in democracy were not a significant factor on respondent’s perception concerning corruptions in both of countries.

Internal Audit in the Public Sector as a Tool for Risk Prevention of Corruption in Public Administration in Portugal

Internal audit plays a crucial role in preventing fraud and corruption in Public Administration. Aims to develop an action plan that will help the organization achieve its goals by adopting a systematic and disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management processes in order to add value and improve operations and performance of an organization. The word corruption means misappropriation of public affairs, including the illegal use of the powers of the Public Administration or similar establishments, in order to obtain the benefits. Corruption can manifest itself in many different forms, from petty corruption to the great corruption. In the present context, the growth of risks that threaten the objectives leads to the implementation of appropriate risk management. Considering the above, with the awareness that corruption and the associated risks is a serious obstacle to normal functioning of institutions, we intend to present in this paper how the internal audit can contribute to preventing the risk of corruption and related offenses in public sector organizations.

Entrepreneurial Orientation and Corruption

Organizational corruption is a wide-spread negative aspect of economic activity, and a seemingly never-ending series of corruption scandals has been made public around the globe. Although research is performed in a broad variety of disciplines, ranging from psychology to management to law, a fully satisfactory explanation for the causes of organizational corruption has not been found. By looking at organizational factors as potential triggers for corruptive behavior, this study draws upon the concept of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). Diverse studies have shown that EO, as an antecedent to company performance, has a positive effect. Recent EO literature, however, indicates that EO has not only positive but also negative consequences. In this line of reasoning, this study builds upon principal agent theory and makes a first step in exploring the impact of EO on a negative aspect of business behavior, namely organizational corruption. We gathered survey data and publicly available data from 411 firms, inquiring for both acts of corruption from within the top management team over the last 3 years and the level of entrepreneurial orientation within the organization. Results show diverging effects along the individual dimensions of EO; they point to risk orientation as the dark side of EO, as it significantly increases the likelihood of corrupt behavior in companies. In contrast, innovation orientation, to a certain extent, counterbalances by reducing the likelihood of corrupt behavior.

Cognitive basis for corruption and attitudes towards corruption in organizations viewed from a structuralist adult developmental meta-perspective.

The paper focuses on corruption and attitudes towards corruption in organizations. It proposes an interdisciplinary framework for reassessing them. It is argued that an integrative theoretical and analytical framework based on the Model of Hierarchical Complexity (mhc) can provide new insights on corruption. Furthermore the proposed framework offers new theoretical horizons for understanding and evaluating public and scientific discourses on corruption. This approach compensates for frequent shortcomings and disciplinary reductionisms in large parts of the social science literature on corruption. It can thus offer a substantially new outlook on the field of behavioral ethics in organizations based on a meta-systematic theory integration.

Review and shortcomings of literature on corruption in organizations in offering a multi-faceted and integrative understanding of the phenomenon.

This article provides a brief overview of literature on corruption from different disciplinary perspectives. After a short look at contributions from history, sociology, anthropology and psychology, the paper primarily reviews articles on corruption in organizations from fields like organizational behavior ( ob), behavioral ethics (be) and management studies (ms). Despite frequent calls for a more interdisciplinary or even a “holistic view” of corruption in this literature, we claim that the literature reviewed here often fails to offer an adequate, i.e. multi-faceted and integrative understanding of the phenomenon, and that this is due to disciplinary constraints and traditions often inducing researchers to take less-than-desirably complex views onto the phenomenon. Moreover, we argue that many articles on corruption do not reflect, question and/or contextualize their own moral and/or ethical standards and evaluation criteria systematically. This is shown, first, with regard to the degree of reflexivity of the applied analytical terms and concepts in general and with regard to the extent to which value judgments are contextualized in particular. Second, our claim is illustrated by a tendency to underrate or ignore major aspects of the subjective dimension of behavior, namely actors’ empirical action logics.