Cause of Corruption in Public Administration - Research Paper Example

Cause of Corruption in Public Administration Cause of Corruption in Public Administration The problem of corruption in the developingcountries has been a rising concern for many scholars in the past few years. It is a part of a vicious circle which is caused by a failure in an institution as well as the politics (Dearden & DSA 2000). The problem can also be traced back to the incidents such as global war, which gives enough time and resources such as ammunitions to that particular gang interested in causing sleaze and bribery. The absence of effective policies to run an institution or a government gives rise to the much needed security of public property. One can conveniently deduce corruption in local government caused by a lack of accountability and transparency. Corruption has taken a more concrete place in the society only since the twentieth century. It has not been solely for material gains that corruption reaches its heights but it also relies on the individuals’ character and behavior at a professional level. It takes only one act of corruption to move on to the second and if the first act is successful, then the following become a habit. Researches on causes of corruption inform that corruption always lingers on the edge of excessive availability of profits such as “trade restrictions, subsidies and tax reductions, price controls, multiple exchange rates practices and foreign exchange allocation schemes, including government-controlled provision credit” (Mauro 1998). Non-government intervention such as in the extraction of natural resources also experience abnormal rate of profits and hence directly hint at exchange of bribery for the task. Corruption is a global phenomenon and may exist in a completely developed or entirely underdeveloped country. It has not only caused institutions to collapse but also famous and reputable figures to experience a major downfall. The announcement of such corrupt acts as causing these declines have become a fuel for mass media and a means of propaganda for many presses. Hence, exposure to scandalous and fraudulent behaviors is brought into light for both public and international awareness. However the process does not halt here because the act of corruption which has already been performed can lead to a decline in the development of the nation’s economy as well as its progress in the direction of modernization (Myint 2000). Many developing countries have made it their priority to monitor corruption in such a sophisticated manner so that the development may not be hindered. The awareness of corruption taking place has made a slight improvement in the academia since more and more research is done in this area to create hype about the negativity prevailing in the societies. Any professional practice done for private gain can lead to corruption. Hence, if a public office is exploited for personal purposes it will create disorder in the entire hierarchy. The problem of corruption is a multifaceted one. The act can be accused for many reasons but the causes of the act itself are also countless in number. Corruption does not happen without a cause. It is a consequence of several already-existing problems at the governmental level. These include the influence of the culture with high “uncertainty avoidance” setup (Selem & Bontis 2009). In such environment, people are prone to seeking work in a well-established organization where individuals start perceiving that they can achieve a personal gain through an informal passage. The misuse of office is an illegal activity which comprises of a complicated set of actions to fulfill the criteria of corruption which no weak participant can avoid. The rule that is broken needs to be re-evaluated for its precision and transparency. One of the main reasons for bribery in signing a public contract may be the preconceived notion that everybody is involved in such dealings. Hence, out of fear of losing a contract because another will be bribed into it is a means of anxiety and frustration that no client can escape unless deeply rooted on his ground of beliefs and values that define his culture. But the companies which bribe the public sector fail to recognize the intensity of the negative influence they cause on the firms which eventually ruin their economic environment (Søreide 2002). Corruption is caused in situations where public officials have authority over several departments in such a manner that they have little accountability and inhuman incentives offered by their superiors. Hence, the more activities these officials indulge in, chances are that corruption would prevail in such cases. Since there is no accountability and strictness in the regulation of these departments, corruption will increase as a result of leniency. As a matter of fact, with such a vast range of control given to the public officials without a decent salary or any other incentives, there will be no positive outcome in terms of security and professionalism in public services. If these amendments are made, there will be a drastic change observed along with almost no corruption (Dininio et al 1999). The lesser the corruption will be, the higher the security rate and the better professional environment to work in. The concept of controlling corruption is likened to the rules of the football game: “The conduct of economic and business affairs, like engaging in a sporting event such as a football match, requires observance of certain “rules of the game” for activities to proceed in an orderly fashion. Rules and regulations are required to maintain a sense of fair play; to prevent disastrous conflicts; keep greed, predatory and other unsavory human instincts in check; minimize socially undesirable consequences; and generally to ensure that players and referees abide by certain accepted standards of moral conduct and good behavior” (Myint 2000). The game requires that one follows the rules and abides by them. Losing the match does not mean being doomed for life. It is a matter of winning and losing and that does not demean a team or a player. The dual purpose of a football game can be related to the bargaining of businesses and dealing with money at the political level since politics is also a kind of game which can turn chaotic if the rules are flouted. Myint explains how important it is to lay stress on the need to keep the rules as transparent as possible. The rules have to be clearly defined and must be known in advance just like they are for the participants of a football game, so that the game is played with justice and can proceed in an organized fashion. Hence, there is a team of people defining the rules and looking after them throughout the game. Similarly, the knowledge of the policies ordained by those in authority along with the knowledge of “foul” play, that is, the corruption itself, is very essential at the level of governance of a nation (Myint 2000). The people who participate in this act are the players who need to be trained to realize the importance of the rules which govern the organization. Another cause of corruption includes going against the system which already exists. This is because most of the organizations lack integrity and proper training in ethics. Similarly, certain organizations have a culture of loyalty and solidarity which leads to a complex system of conveyance of corruption due to hesitance and obligations to that particular party involved in corruption. In order to eliminate this corruption altogether, institutional reforms should be made whereby authority should be given in a limited amount to the public officials so that the accountability criteria is met along with providing proper incentives to the employees. On a societal level, reforms should be made for the purpose of altering attitudes towards the organizational system. A political will should be marshaled in order to protract the interventions made against corruption. Tragically, these initiatives taken to reduce corruption vary from different countries and over a period of time. Hence, a fixed endorsement of these reforms is not possible (Dininio et al 1999). It can be, however, gradually introduced through public awareness programs and silent motivating factors so that the effect occurs at its own pace. There are other causes of corruption as well which include the scarcity of public property that has fixed official cost which leads to the retrieval of informal quota through bribery. Any public sector with low wages means its vast connection with low-level counterfeit payments. Supreme State interventions such as “protectionism, State-owned enterprises, price controls, exchange controls, import licenses” have also given way to corruption. The economies in their transitional phase are likely to experience a setback due to corruption in the process of undertaking privatization and establishment of the company’s framework and contract law (Dearden & DSA 2000). Corruption does not always decrease the cost of production by the firm or individual. Bribes that are paid to increase the regulatory activities of the government or acquire an import license or to gain points for contracts of government will always lead to a raise in costs. This will have a vice versa effect if the bribe is paid for opposite intentions to degrade the governments’ efforts and attain contracts to destabilize the government’s efforts and departments. Government may acquire a substantial amount of economic rent for the purpose of exploitation through a vicious means of monopoly and oligopoly. Corruption that leads to the reduction or complete evasion of tax will only affect the government’s tax revenue. By hiring higher priced contractors, the corruption scheme will indirectly add to government’s cost (Dearden & DSA 2000). Corruption can ruin the prices throughout the economy creating hindrance in economic transactions, increasing uncertainty which the individuals seek to avoid. This encourages the flight of the capital and destabilizes the investment process. Corruption needs to be thoroughly analysed and assessed for future purposes of controlling the organizational limitations. The act itself is directly connected with how futuristic the institution is in terms of developing it into a better system. It also connects with the people who become a part of that system who are scrutinized and scanned for any past incident related to corruption. It also relates to the culture in which it functions depending upon the beliefs of the people who take part in such activities and it also relies heavily on the policy-makers who make it possible for the system to be as transparent as it can be in order to avoid any incident in the first place (Selem & Bontis 2009). Corruption has a dynamic impact on the functionality of the organizations. These effects include the lack of the functioning of the judiciary in an appropriate manner and lack of ethics in the organizations. Furthermore, the functioning of organizations may also fall below the optimum levels. The corrupt officials go as far as designing tenders to request for particular qualifications which are worthless but for the bribing company it can be acquired at a cheap cost so it will cross the boundary to achieve that target. They will extend the time of payment in order to obtain the bribe. The act does not stop here. The officials involved in the act of corruption would also change the amount promised at the time of transaction. This leads to a further complication in the system. The modification of the contract is always an easy way out for the corrupt officials. Relying on a particular system of bidding such as the International Competitive Bidding (ICB) does not give any fruitful solutions to the huge problems of corruption (Søreide 2002). It only reduces the possibility of a fraudulent act, which is rather psychological than practical. According to Søreide, corruption is a very deep tooted issue and the introduction of fresh policies will not be able to overcome this problem. This is because the corrupt individuals will end up finding techniques to differ from the new regulations. Søreide explains that better environment for work should be created along with good salaries. Furthermore, the duties of individuals and departments should be divided in a more appropriate fashion and the power to take decisions should not lie in just the hand of a few people. The reason is obvious and requires a careful analysis. An organization needs to develop its foundations and re-evaluate its structure from the core because it is trying to remove a pesticide which has been growing inside it for many years. It is an infection which will take time to remove but in order to avoid a relapse of this disease in the system, what Søreide persists is the constant assessment of the data available to the authority through which hiring and the cost analysis takes place. Reporting of corruption by the people who observe it is also a means to eliminate the act (Søreide 2002). In order to channelize this method or reporting, a new department should be constructed in the organization which looks into the matter up-close and personally. Political instability is a major cause of corruption. There is absolutely no way that one nation experiences a downfall on the grounds that it had less resources or poor economy by birth. Corruption always exists behind the scenes as a root cause of such decline. In order to wipe corruption from the screen one needs to have a complete knowledge of its existence and be alert when entering any organization especially the one that is connected with politics. Both a well-organized corruption and a chaotic corruption cannot be distinguished because they intend to meet the same target of exploiting the wealth that an organization owns (Mauro 1998). Usually it is the public administration which suffers the most at the hands of corruption. When it comes to defining rules and criteria of a corruption free institution, one should know that transparency is the most convenient method and may appear to be contradictory to the strictness of the law. In order to remove this notion, the policy-makers need to redefine the objectives in specific terms such that it evades corruption and also the necessity of detailed chain of rules (Søreide 2002). A collective effort by Dininio and others which aided them to compile a handbook to take initiatives against corruption was introduced with the intention of helping the USAID and their partners’ mission to fight corruption. Ever since the stress has started to be laid on trading and development for the recovery from wars, less emphasis is directed towards the security and regulation of law. Due to the increasing competition in the market, nobody is willing to share their expenses on dealing with corruption. What the business dealers fail to recognize is how corruption is stealing the public investment from the educational sector onto the capital projects where there is a high rate of corruption. This has not only affected the education sector by depriving it from the resources it requires to establish itself but also increased the rate of corruption through participating in projects where there are more chances of fraudulence than at any other place. Hence, it can be stated that corruption is a serious threat to the developmental process. It reduces the trust in the political realm because there is no record of accountability in the policymaking. This means the judiciary is no longer transparent and there is an imbalance in the provision of services in the public sector. The government is no longer considered legitimate because there is no trust and tolerance left to show to a corrupt body of governance (Dininio 1999). Those who are aware of the dangers of corruption and how they spread like fire will make a conscious effort to make the rules as transparent and defined at the earliest to eradicate this pest from the society. Corruption is a term which deviates from the norm prevalent in a context, for instance, political. Gaining favours to acquire a job or working ones way through a web of authorities for personal gain is an act that dislocates the entire functionary structure of the office (Heidenheimer 2002). The structural adjustment programs can complicate the issue of low pay in the civil services indirectly boosting corruption. This builds up pressure on the public sector budgets. Reforms offer solution to get rid of these problems by bringing two firms into a partnership which exposes their problems for collective solutions. By creating an environment that causes hatred towards acts of corruption, even the developing countries can rid themselves of the fraud prevailing in their societies (Dearden & DSA 2000). There is always a better way to get rid of large-scale problems like corruption from the institutions that have been running for more than a decade. Experienced organizations can always aid the new setups to mould according to the existing firms which have the practice in controlling corruption. The significance of transparency to lessen the degree of corruption cannot be underestimated. The necessary information should be available to the organizational departments in the same way as it is available to the authorities. Stress should be laid on applying international prices as a yardstick of standardization to maximize the good prevailing in the society. References Dearden, S., & Development Studies Association. (2000).Corruption and economic development. Manchester: Development Studies Association, European Development Policy Study Group. Dininio, P., Kpundeh, S. J., Leiken, R., Center for Democracy and Governance., & United States. (1999). A handbook on fighting corruption. Washington, D.C: Center for Democracy and Governance, United States Agency for International Development. Heidenheimer, A. J., & Johnston, M. (2002). Political corruption: Concepts & contexts. New Brunswick, N.J: Transaction Publishers Mauro, P. (January 01, 1998). Corruption: Causes, Consequences, and Agenda for Further Research.Finance & Development, 35, 1, 11. Myint, U. (December 2000) “Corruption: Causes, Consequences and Cures” in Asia-Pacific development journal. Vol. 7, no. 2,. Bangkok: UN. 33-58 Seleim, A., & Bontis, N. (January 16, 2009). The relationship between culture and corruption: a cross-national study. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 10, 1, 165-184. Søreide, T., & Chr. Michelsens institutt. (2002). Corruption in public procurement: Causes, consequences and cures. Bergen, Norway: Chr. Michelsen Institute, Development Studies and Human Rights. Read More