Effects of Administrative Corruption in the Public Sector - Essay Example

Research proposal Title: Effects of administrative corruption in the public sector on the society Executive summary: This research aims at investigating how corruption in the public sector distorts the socio-economic status of a society. Besides, the research will determine the nature of relation that exists between corruption and the administrative lapses, laxity and absenteeism in the public sector organizations. By conducting this research, the researcher aims at adding to the body of existing knowledge about the issue of corruption in the public sector. An in depth study of the ways in which corruption is integrated into the public sector is essential in order to come up with the most rational and cost effective course of action to combat it in the best interest of the public sector and hence the whole society. The study will involve an appropriate sample of participants serving in government organizations and data will be collected from them through strategically designed questionnaires to gather the optimum amount of data for quantitative analysis. Data will be analyses with the help of statistical softwares to ensure the validity of the information collected. The study is intended to be spread over a duration of no more than three months. Proposal introduction: According to Rabl & Kuhlmann (2008), corruption refers to deviant behaviour that could occur in the politics, society, the economy, or within an organisation, for the benefit of an individual or an institution. Such acts of corruption are kept in secret and are damaging to all the individuals involved, particularly to people who have contributed funds and have been cheated on. It has been found to have wide ranging and profound effects and research studies have actually found a relationship between corruption and private investment as well as growth. There is also a connection between corruption and currency rises and capital flows, higher income inequality, poverty, inflation, inferior resource allocation, distorted expenditures by the government, thereby all lowering standards of public life (Faria 2001). The researcher aims to find out the problems that are the result of corruption that have not yet been explored. For this study, the researcher shall focus on the public sector, since corruption done in the public sector is more detrimental towards the well-being of the global society. According to the Law Commission in its Consultation Paper on Corruption, public bodies are more prone to corruption as compared to private bodies (Law Commission 1997). Public sector plays a vital role in the economic development of a country. Research to explore the ways in which it is affected by corruption will provide a means for the future researchers to design ways to eliminate corruption. Hence, this research will contribute towards the knowledge required to take remedial measures to strengthen the business and economy of a country. Problem statement: Corruption in the public sector is quite widespread and deep-rooted. It is extremely detrimental to the socio-economic structure of a country and is indeed, one of the biggest challenges in the way of progress that a society encounters in the modern age. Although, there is a considerable amount of literature available on this problem that addresses the various ways in which corruption takes place in the public sector and how it affects the society, yet there is still a severe need to explore the matter further in order to gain firm control over the corruption that has so far, been an integral part of business in the public sector. Objectives of the Study: Through this study, the researcher intends: To explore the means of corruption in the public sector. To determine the relationship between corruption and administrative lapses. To determine the relationship between corruption and administrative laxity. To determine the relationship between corruption and absenteeism of staff in the public sector organizations. To determine the effects of corruption on business in the public sector and the economy of a country in particular. Literature review: Corruption has traditionally been defined in a number of ways. Zafarullah & Siddiquee (2001) feel that any action that distorts expected administrative behaviour is equivalent to corruption, or will lead to that eventually. Therefore, any public official who either deviates from the norm, discriminately administers a law or adopts a subjective approach when dealing with a client, can be perceived to be irresponsible morally. Thus, corruption does not only refer to malversation of funds and bribery, but it also refers to improper administrative conduct, which shall be the main focus of this paper later on. According to the World Bank Institute (2004), corruption has been identified as the most damaging obstacle towards the development of the society and the economy. In fact, bribery has been identified as costing to as much as $ 1 trillion annually. The crime of corruption usually depends on the motive of the person behind it, the opportunity to commit the act, finally get away with it and ‘rationalisation’ (Cressey 1953). According to Cressey (1953), individuals who turn to corruption do not start off that way. They are first honest and then turn to being dishonest given certain conditions. Thus, there is the existence of the ‘tipping point,’ which refers to the point where an individual may become pressured into falling into corruption, or disillusioned into doing so. According to Scanlan (2008), the government of the United Kingdom that aims to fight off fraudulent and corrupt activity on the part of officials in administrative positions, often find difficulty with cases that involved public and listed companies and those involved in the provision of financial services. Becker (1968) has mentioned that when an official chooses to be corrupt over being honest is due to the fact that the latter choice is the optimal choice for a rational utility maximize since there are more benefits coming from being corrupt as compared to being honest. Research has shown that there has been a relation between smaller governments and the level of corruption. Thus, the smaller a government system is, there is a less likely chance of corruption to take place (Melese 2002). Scanlan (2004) mentions that the first requirement for corruption to take place should be that an individual cannot be a principal to an act of corruption unless he/she actually holds a position in office, and the act of corruption stems from the consequences of the appointment to that position. Furthermore, the failure to disclose information to any public body by the official in question may also be considered as an instrument towards corruption (Scanlan 2004). Negligence of duties by the official is also another expression of corruption that exists in countries around the world. Being late when it comes to office commitments, leaving early, being absent and unauthorized leave are very common in offices that are in the public sector. It goes without saying that officials who do not report for work cannot be approached to fulfil their responsibilities and cannot be accessed for services. There are plenty of excuses for this, most of which are due to the personal interests of the officials themselves. Even though it is difficult to measure the impact of such wilful dereliction and fraudulent practice, it is certain that such behaviour heavily puts the public interest at a disadvantage. It also defrauds the government financially since all employees are paid to perform and yet, their performance falls short of expectations, if they even perform at all (Khan, et al. 1995). If a public official is absent from work, money is being wasted away and the nation is being cheated upon (Kiapi 2009). There are several reasons why this may happen, but according to Gorta (1998), corrupt administrators are selfish unless there are incentives that encourage them to be honest. Since the middle of the 1980’s, there has been a decrease in the standard of living when it came to the public officials. This is due to problems such as the disappearance of operational budgets, delays in the salaries of the workers in the public sector, all of which add to the feeling of insecurity that forces the public officials to do something in order to improve their living standards. As a result, the judicial system of the administration is weakened, thereby allowing cases of administrative laxity and other forms of corruption to happen. The inefficiency of the government then means that there is a lack of central control with regards to running the nation and the implementation of reforms is hampered significantly (Bayart et al 2002). In the UK, the 1889 Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act helps to solve issues where officers, agents and government bodies such as local authorities will be persecuted. There are also cases where bribery and the corruption of officers or agents of government bodies is amended by virtue of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1916 s2, wherein any payment made by an individual or company to an employee in public office has been presumed to have been made in a corrupt manner (Scanlan, 2008). According to the UNDP report, there are a number of ways to avoid corruption. For one thing, replacing the officials who are responsible for corrupt activities has to be taken seriously. There is also a need to define the responsibilities of the public officials clearly, so that the official would be less tempted to slack off from his/her duties. In addition, awareness and education programs may be beneficial in making sure that the public have the right to complain against an official who they have reason to feel is responsible for corrupt activities (UNDP, 2009). The previous paragraphs have described the concept of administration corruption as that which utilizes the funds of the public for the administrator’s own personal interest. Although the concept of corruption itself is usually related to misusing the public’s funds and spending the nation’s finances for the gain of the corrupt officials, by way of bribes for instance, there are other ways of corruption that do not rely on finances directly. The main ways through which such behaviour is exhibited lies in the administration being too ‘relaxed’ in fulfilling their responsibilities. Cases of tardiness and absenteeism can also be considered as corrupt behaviour since these employees of the state are being paid in order to do their work for the development of society and the entire country. Thus, combating corruption has appeared to be a much more viable and alternative that is worth understanding and exploring more about. The vast study of literature mentioned above tells that considerable investigation has been made in the past to study the ways in which corruption takes place and the way it deteriorates the economic strength of the society, but the concept of administrative corruption is one that has not been studied much and there is a lot that needs to be discovered about it. The above discussion highlights the conventional approaches past researchers have made towards exploring the causes and effects of corruption on the society in general. Data related to the cause and effects of corruption in the public sector in particular is limited despite the fact that corruption in this sector brings more disastrous results as compared to that in the private sector. Through this dissertation, the researcher shall try to find the correlation between corruption and administrative laxity, administrative lapses and absenteeism. At the same time, the researcher shall also seek to determine the administrative chaos that is likely to occur as a result of committing such acts against society as a whole. Research Methodology: In order to satisfy the objectives mentioned above, the researcher plans to employ the method of quantitative research in order to find out the cause and effects of corruption in the public sector and to determine whether corruption is correlated to the three factors as mentioned. According to Black (1999), the quantitative approach is one that yields categorical responses so that the researcher can find the answers to his/her questions. Through the help of a research instrument, which comes in the form of surveys, the researcher is able to draw statements and conclusions from the answers of the respondents involved. Kealey & Protheroe (1996) have stated that the quantitative method of research is one that causes the researcher to come to a specific conclusion without having to rely on his/her own judgment to do so, which would be the case if the researcher opted to adopt the qualitative approach. Sampling Strategy: The researcher plans to gather a total of 100 respondents, all of whom work at institutions that government run. These include government departments and government agencies in Location X. Although the researcher does not plan to keep gender preferences when choosing the characteristics for the sample required, the researcher shall, however, set standards when it comes to the time period that the respondent has worked at the government institution. This is because the researcher feels that in order for the respondent to fully comprehend the objectives of the research and the research questions, it is necessary that he/she has actually worked in the public sector for at least a year, prior to participating in the research study. It will essentially be a retrospective study that would be based on the cross-sectional analysis of the financial audits of the public sector organizations made in the last 10 years. Data will be collected from the respondents via questionnaires suitably designed to gather maximum information from the respondents with minimum inconvenience to the respondents. Questionnaires will be open ended to ensure that the respondents are given sufficient room to respond in the way they feel appropriate. In order to remove opinion bias, Delphi technique will be implemented to gather information from the respondents and the questionnaires will be continuously redesigned till the time the maximum respondents identify common causes and effects of corruption. In order to verify the reliability of the information collected, questionnaires will be manually reviewed to check for any unanswered questions or duplications before feeding the data into the SPSS for examination and result generation. Research Questions: Through this study, the researcher plans to ask the respondents: Are you familiar with the concept of corruption? Do you agree/ disagree that corruption is related to the administration’s tendency to sometimes be too ‘lax’ when it comes to fulfilling their responsibilities? Do you agree that corruption is the result of an official being absent from work too often? Do you agree/ disagree that corruption is related to administrative lapses? Do you feel that corruption in any form occurs within your organisation? Proposed Timescale: In order to carry out the research study, the researcher has decided to set aside a time period of one month, which shall serve as the time needed to gather necessary data that are all related to the topic to be studied. Another period of three days shall be set aside for survey design and survey preparation, while another period of one month shall be utilized in order to make way for actual survey distribution. One week shall be enough for data collection, data processing and analysis of the surveys administered. References: Bayart, J, Ellis, S, Hibou, B, 2002, “The criminalization of the state in Africa”. Indiana University. Becker, G 1968. “Crime and punishment: An economic approach”, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 76, March/April, pp. 169-217. Berkman, S, Boswell, N, Bruner, F, Gough, M, McCormick, JT, Pedersen, P, Ugaz, J & Zimmermann, S 2008. “The fight against corruption: international organisations at a Crossroads”, Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 15, no.2, pp. 124-154. Black, T 1999 “Doing quantitative research in the social sciences: An integrated approach to research design, measurement and statistics”, Sage Publications, Ltd. Cressey, D R 1953 “Other people’s money: A study in the social psychology of Embezzlement”, The Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Faria, J R 2001 “Rent seeking in academia”, American Economist, Vol. 45 pp.69-74. Gorta, A 1998 “Minimising corruption: applying lessons from the crime prevention literature”, Crime, Law and Social Change, vol. 30, pp.67-87. Kealey, DJ and Protheroe, DR 1996 “The effectiveness of cross-cultural training for expatriates: An assessment of the literature on the issue”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 141-165. Khan, MM, Rahman, H, & Siddiquee, NA 1995 “Ethics and public service in Bangladesh”, Indian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 41, pp. 592-608. Kiapi, E 2009 “Corruption-Uganda: Leader’s integrity questioned”. [Online] Accessed 10 December 2009 from http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49396 Law Commission 1997 “Law Commission Consultation Paper” No. 145, para 1.3. Rabl, T, & Kühlmann, TM 2008 “Understanding corruption in organisations – development and empirical assessment of an action model”, vol. 82, no.2, pp.477-95. Scanlan, G 2004 “The control of corruption”. Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 316-321. Scanlan, G 2008 “Offences concerning directors and officers of a company-Fraud and corruption in the United Kingdom- the present and the future”, Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 15, no.1, pp. 22-37. UNDP (2009) UNDP case studies in anti-corruption: Tanzania. [Online] Accessed 10 December 2009 from http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:l2ahLzGfGugJ:www.aman palestine.org/English/documents/Official/Tanzania.pdf+administrative+laxity+and+corrupti n&hl=tl&gl=ph&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgyRLtsxd4okVxUhNU2QfmZc8OtYrhh f_bRYEYlmAUcjNax8Wtt1oQaUwH9rz0XrP81fyvZF4bCQJ7FIHOzoQQjAUj6faiIf9TbH KRgJGUx0UKRHJpizQQ3Kl8AtMuaYjUsT&sig=AHIEtbTvY75 ciFPqFQQ3xdPLbsWY65cIg World Bank Institute 2004 “The costs of corruption”, World Bank Institute, Washington, DC Zafarullah, H & Siddiquee, NA 2001 “Dissecting public sector corruption in Bangladesh: Issues and problems of control”, Public Organisation Review, p. 465. Read More