IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/z9bcy.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding the Micro-Foundations of Administrative Corruption in the Public Sector: Findings from a Systematic Literature Review

Author

Listed:
  • Weißmüller, Kristina Sabrina

    (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  • Zuber, Anna

Abstract

Public sector corruption is one of the most pressing unresolved issues of our time. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study examines the psychological and contextual mechanisms that allow individuals to psychologically rationalize their engagement in administrative corruption. By conducting a systematic literature review of 93 studies, 241 cases of empirical evidence on the relationships between micro, meso, and macro-level factors are synthesized to reveal seven dimensions which effectively affect civil servants’ corruptibility. Mapping the status quo of the discourse, this study reveals that moral justification for administrative corruption is the outcome of a multi-layered and dynamic process of social cognition based on various processes of rationalization beyond greed: relationships, social obligations, and culturally reinforced norms (mis-)guide behavior in the context of socially varying psychological reference points of accountability and legitimacy that lead to essential moral value conflicts between self-serving behavior and integrity.

Suggested Citation

  • Weißmüller, Kristina Sabrina & Zuber, Anna, 2022. "Understanding the Micro-Foundations of Administrative Corruption in the Public Sector: Findings from a Systematic Literature Review," OSF Preprints z9bcy, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:z9bcy
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/z9bcy
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/63307fda0b7272116b2b1156/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/z9bcy?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eugen Dimant & Guglielmo Tosato, 2018. "Causes And Effects Of Corruption: What Has Past Decade'S Empirical Research Taught Us? A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 335-356, April.
    2. Dean Neu & Jeff Everett & Abu Shiraz Rahaman, 2013. "Internal Auditing and Corruption within Government: The Case of the Canadian Sponsorship Program," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(3), pages 1223-1250, September.
    3. Boly, Amadou & Gillanders, Robert, 2018. "Anti-corruption policy making, discretionary power and institutional quality: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 314-327.
    4. Heather Keathley-Herring & Eileen Van Aken & Fernando Gonzalez-Aleu & Fernando Deschamps & Geert Letens & Pablo Cardenas Orlandini, 2016. "Assessing the maturity of a research area: bibliometric review and proposed framework," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 927-951, November.
    5. Chen, Yanting & Liu, Qijun, 2018. "Public-sector wages and corruption: An empirical study," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 189-197.
    6. Daniel Kaufmann & Gil Mehrez & Tugrul Gurgur, 2019. "Voice or public sector management? An empirical investigation of determinants of public sector performance based on a survey of public officials," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 321-348, January.
    7. Seraphim Voliotis, 2011. "Abuse of Ministerial Authority, Systemic Perjury, and Obstruction of Justice: Corruption in the Shadows of Organizational Practice," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(4), pages 537-562, September.
    8. Q. Miao & A. Newman & J. Yu & L. Xu, 2013. "The Relationship Between Ethical Leadership and Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior: Linear or Curvilinear Effects?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(3), pages 641-653, September.
    9. Rachael Pope, 2017. "The NHS: Sticking Fingers in Its Ears, Humming Loudly," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 577-598, October.
    10. Bienvenido Ortega & Antonio Casquero & Jesús Sanjuán, 2016. "Corruption and Convergence in Human Development: Evidence from 69 Countries During 1990–2012," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 127(2), pages 691-719, June.
    11. Salvador Parrado & Carl Dahlström & Víctor Lapuente, 2018. "Mayors and Corruption in Spain: Same Rules, Different Outcomes," South European Society and Politics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 303-322, July.
    12. Jäkel Tim, 2019. "Pay Dissatisfaction among Municipal Employees: Empirical Evidence from Russia’s Stavropol Region," NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy, Sciendo, vol. 12(1), pages 69-89, June.
    13. Adang Budiman & Amanda Roan & Victor Callan, 2013. "Rationalizing Ideologies, Social Identities and Corruption Among Civil Servants in Indonesia During the Suharto Era," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(1), pages 139-149, August.
    14. Simon Gächter & Jonathan F. Schulz, 2016. "Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies," Nature, Nature, vol. 531(7595), pages 496-499, March.
    15. Sarah Brierley, 2020. "Unprincipled Principals: Co‐opted Bureaucrats and Corruption in Ghana," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(2), pages 209-222, April.
    16. Nicholas Bautista-Beauchesne & César Garzon, 2019. "Conceptualizing corruption prevention: a systematic literature review," Journal of Financial Crime, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 26(3), pages 719-745, July.
    17. Rema Hanna & Shing-Yi Wang, 2017. "Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service: Evidence from India," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 262-290, August.
    18. Samson Tiki & Belinda Luke & Janet Mack, 2021. "Perceptions of bribery in Papua New Guinea’s public sector: Agency and structural influences," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(4), pages 217-227, October.
    19. Christian Hauser, 2019. "Fighting Against Corruption: Does Anti-corruption Training Make Any Difference?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 281-299, September.
    20. Casey J. Fleming, 2020. "Prosocial rule breaking at the street level: the roles of leaders, peers, and bureaucracy," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(8), pages 1191-1216, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shuguang Jiang & Marie Claire Villeval, 2022. "Dishonesty in Developing Countries -What Can We Learn From Experiments?," Working Papers hal-03899654, HAL.
    2. Hübler, Olaf & Koch, Melanie & Menkhoff, Lukas & Schmidt, Ulrich, 2021. "Corruption and cheating: Evidence from rural Thailand," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 145, pages 1-43.
    3. Alain Cohn & Tobias Gesche & Michel André Maréchal, 2022. "Honesty in the Digital Age," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 827-845, February.
    4. CHEN, Xuezheng & GUI, Lin & WU, Tao & ZHANG, Jun, 2024. "A theory of symbiotic corruption," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 478-494.
    5. Jiang, Shuguang & Wei, Qian & Zhao, Lei, 2024. "Synergizing anti-corruption strategies: Group monitoring and endogenous crackdown – An experimental investigation," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    6. Prasenjit Banerjee & Vegard Iversen & Sandip Mitra & Antonio Nicolò & Kunal Sen, 2018. "Politicians and Their Promises in an Uncertain World: Evidence from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in India," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1806, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    7. Federico Ceschel & Alessandro Hinna & Fabian Homberg, 2022. "Public Sector Strategies in Curbing Corruption: A Review of the Literature," Public Organization Review, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 571-591, September.
    8. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Fjeldstad, Odd-Helge & Mmari, Donald & Sjursen, Ingrid Hoem & Tungodden, Bertil, 2021. "Understanding the resource curse: A large-scale experiment on corruption in Tanzania," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 129-157.
    9. Cristina Bicchieri & Eugen Dimant, 2018. "It's Not A Lie If You Believe It. Lying and Belief Distortion Under Norm-Uncertainty," PPE Working Papers 0012, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    10. Garbarino, Ellen & Slonim, Robert & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2019. "Loss aversion and lying behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 379-393.
    11. Margarita Leib & Nils Köbis & Rainer Michael Rilke & Marloes Hagens & Bernd Irlenbusch, 2023. "Corrupted by Algorithms? How AI-generated and Human-written Advice Shape (Dis)honesty," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 251, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    12. Lata Gangadharan & Tarun Jain & Pushkar Maitra & Joe Vecci, 2022. "Lab-in-the-field experiments: perspectives from research on gender," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 73(1), pages 31-59, January.
    13. Kaiwen Leong & Huailu Li & Sharon Xuejing Zuo, 2024. "Cheating amongst youth offenders: How peers and their social status influence cheating," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(1), pages 242-266, January.
    14. Abeler, Johannes & Falk, Armin & Kosse, Fabian, 2021. "Malleability of Preferences for Honesty," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 296, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    15. Lang, Matthias & Schudy, Simeon, 2023. "(Dis)honesty and the value of transparency for campaign promises," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    16. Andrea Albertazzi, 2022. "Individual cheating in the lab: a new measure and external validity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(1), pages 37-67, July.
    17. Muehlheusser, Gerd & Promann, Timo & Roider, Andreas & Wallmeier, Niklas, 2024. "Honesty of Groups: Effects of Size and Gender Composition," IZA Discussion Papers 16954, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Weißmüller, Kristina Sabrina, 2022. "Implicit Dimensions of Moral Licensing in Citizen-State Interactions," OSF Preprints a8uwd, Center for Open Science.
    19. Olaf Hübler & Melanie Koch & Lukas Menkhoff & Ulrich Schmidt, 2019. "Cheating and Corruption: Evidence from a Household Survey," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1826, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    20. Alessandro Bucciol & Simona Cicognani & Natalia Montinari, 2020. "Cheating in university exams: the relevance of social factors," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 67(3), pages 319-338, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:z9bcy. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.