Understanding the micro‐foundations of administrative corruption in the public sector: Findings from a systematic literature review

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Kristina S. Weißmüller,Anna Zuber
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13699

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Understanding the micro-foundations of administrative

corruption in the public sector: Findings from a systematic

literature review

Kristina S. Weißmüller

1,2

| Anna Zuber

2

1

Department of Political Science and Public

Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

2

KPM Center for Public Management, Universität

Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Correspondence

Kristina S. Weißmüller, Department of Political

Science and Public Administration, Vrije

Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105,

1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Email: k.s.weissmueller@vu.nl

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 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

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 pro-

cesses of rationalization beyond greed: accountability conflicts, 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 value conflicts between self-serving behavior and integrity.

Evidence for practice

•Public managers can use knowledge of the psychological and motivational

micro-foundations of administrative corruption to understand why civil ser-

vants engage in corruption to design effective anti-corruption strategies. For

instance, public managers can lead by example, foster common public values,

increase procedural clarity and transparency, and aim to reduce the pressure

exercised on public bureaucrats by political agents to reduce compliance

risks.

•Corrupt behavior is the outcome of many interactive factors beyond financial

motivation, but salary dissatisfaction can overwrite the preventive effect of high

moral standards and public service motivation.

•Adverse social group dynamics are particularly problematic because they shift

agents’locus of accountability and their moral obligation from serving society to

serving members of an informal relationship network.

•Public managers aiming to curb administrative corruption may benefit from

strategically designing organizational structures in a way that promotes trans-

parent, formalized, and efficient procedures. Transparency and fairness are par-

ticularly relevant regarding personnel practices and compensation to inhibit

the negative effects of salary dissatisfaction, which may escalate into moral dis-

engagement and self-serving behavior. Salary satisfaction is more important

than salary level.

Received: 14 February 2022 Revised: 22 June 2023 Accepted: 29 June 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13699

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1704 Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1704–1726.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

INTRODUCTION

At the core of public sector organizations lies the purpose

of serving the public interest. Yet, in many countries, cor-

ruption is a constant threat to the realization of this fun-

damental objective of public administration (Bellé &

Cantarelli, 2017). Commonly defined as the “abuse of

public office for private gain”(Meyer-Sahling et al., 2018,

277), administrative corruption not only undermines pub-

lic trust, but weakens the legitimacy of public sector orga-

nizations (Liu et al., 2022). Its negative impact on

economic development and social justice has been exten-

sively documented: Administrative corruption decreases

the efficiency of public institutions, reduces societal wel-

fare, hinders economic growth (Shleifer & Vishny, 1993),

erodes individuals’commitment to public values, and

undermines the core principles of bureaucracy, particu-

larly equity (Hira & Shiao, 2016). The violation of the

equity principle results in disproportionate discrimination

of disadvantaged groups of societies (Gächter &

Schulz, 2016), excluding individuals from access to public

and judicial services (Uslaner, 2008), political representa-

tion, participation, education, and positions of power. In

the context of public administration, corruption gradually

weakens and erodes the core principles of public institu-

tions and administrative traditions.

While its relevance stands without question, corruption

research is often complicated by a fragmentation of the

discourse across many disciplines and fields (Jain, 1998,

2001;Roman,2014), lacking theoretical and evidence-

based concepts that are both precise and applicable

to different cultural and institutional environments

(Meyer-Sahling et al., 2018). As a “thick”ethical concept,

corruption encompasses a high degree of conceptual nor-

mativity, and the degree to which individuals perceive cer-

tain behaviors as “corrupt”is contingent upon contextual

and cultural factors. Consequently, several authors point

out that explaining corruption merely as the outcome of a

rational cost–benefit analysis of principal-agent problems

fails to provide feasible explanations for the importance of

intrinsic and latent motivations in administrative corrup-

tion (Jancsics, 2019;Larkinetal.,2012; Navot et al., 2016)

and for the varying meanings of corruption in different

cultures (Pertiwi, 2022). While prior research focused on

definitions of corruption in the context of economic devel-

opment in general (Dimant & Tosato, 2018;Ortega

et al., 2016), its various forms in specific industries or policy

fields (Hanna et al., 2011), potentials for reducing corrup-

tion in bureaucracies (Gans-Morse et al., 2018), or focusing

solely on corruption prevention (Bautista-Beauchesne &

Garzon, 2019), a comprehensive analysis of the psychologi-

cal and motivational aspects in public agents’(i.e., micro-

level) behavior beyond a narrow focus on material gain is

still missing. This is striking because institutional integ-

rity is contingent on the integrity, motives, and particu-

larly the behaviors of the individuals acting within these

institutions. Such an analysis has to acknowledge that

corruption is contingent on cultural norms and societal

values and thus needs to be evaluated in relative,

context-dependent terms that consider the boundary

conditions of corrupt behavior instead of assuming

universality of motives, attitudes, and behaviors

(Mungiu, 2006; Mungiu-Pippidi & Dadaˇ

sov, 2016).

This study closes this gap by synthesizing the current

body of empirical evidence across different disciplines

and academic discourses to build a foundation for under-

standing civil servants’corruptibility from a micro-level

perspective. Building upon Ajzen’s(

1991) theory of

planned behavior (TPB), this is a direct response to

explicit calls for more corruption research drawing atten-

tion toward corrupt practices and the various motives of

corrupt agents by De Graaf and Huberts (2008), Budiman

et al. (2013), Hanna and Wang (2017), Meyer-Sahling et al.

(2018), and De Waele et al. (2021). Specifically, this sys-

tematic review focuses on the psychological, motiva-

tional, and cognitive aspects that determine individuals’

likelihood of engaging in corruption in the specific con-

text of the public sector and its agents. Additionally, this

study identifies and considers the effect of particular

types (Jancsics, 2019), shades (Heidenheimer, 2009), and

contexts (Graycar, 2015) of corruption to establish con-

ceptual clarity for corruptibility—that is, “the propensity

of a government employee to engage in corruption”

(Zhang et al., 2019, 553)—on the micro-level of adminis-

trative behavior. In this, it contributes to and expands the

theoretical understanding of the nature of administrative

corruption beyond developmental issues on the institu-

tional and national levels. This focus on individual agents

is novel and essential to understand why and how some

individuals engage in public sector corruption and how

public bureaucracies may identify neuralgic leverage to

curb corruption.

This study pursues two specific objectives by system-

atically reviewing and meta-synthesizing the current body

of scientific literature. First, it provides an overview and

appraisal of the extent of scholarly knowledge from a

micro-perspective, identifying the concepts and defini-

tions, inputs, and outputs used and identified by scholar-

ship so far. Second, it systematically evaluates the

empirical evidence worldwide to build a more compre-

hensive theory of the motives, psychological mechanisms,

and dynamics that manifest in corrupt behavior in public

bureaucracies. This also informs anticorruption strategies

and policy design. To this end, this study pursues two

research questions:

RQ1. What is the status quo of the discourse on

administrative corruption and how is the micro-

level of administrative corruption studied?

RQ2. What empirical evidence has accumu-

lated regarding the psychological, motivational,

and behavioral micro-foundations of adminis-

trative corruption?

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW 1705