Developing anti-Corruption Strategies in Public Sector: Study of the Role of Public Service Motivation and Employees' Commitment

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Payam Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor, Department of Management and Economics, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran.

Abstract

Extended Abstract
Abstract
Todays, offering solutions for preventing of administrative corruption or reducing it, is an essential issue in public administration studies. Several factors effect on administrative corruption in public sector. This research aimed to examine the effect of public service motivation on administrative corruption with the mediating role of employees' commitment. This research is an applied and descriptive and correlation one. The statistical population was public organization's employees of Shahr-e-Babak that based upon Morgan's table, 260 persons of them selected by stratified random sampling method as a sample. For collecting data, three standard questionnaires were used that their reliability was confirmed by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient (0/87, 0/90, 0/88) and CR (0/88, 0/91, 0/87) and for validity was used AVE index (0/58, 0/64, 0/53) and confirmative factor analysis. Findings through structural equation modeling with LISREL 8/5 software demonstrated that public service motivation with the mediating role of employees'commitment has a negative effect on administrative corruption. Also, public service motivation directly effects on administrative corruption. The results confirm that public service motivation can provide an appropriate context for developing anti-corruption strategies in public sector.
 
 
Introduction
Todays, the need for ways to prevent or reduce corruption has become a fundamental issue in public administration (Kim & Kim, 2016). The issue of corruption is a complex and obscure issue that refers to the "deviant behaviors of bureaucrats whose origin is the violation of cultural and social norms or violation of the expectations of citizens (Kim, 2003: 20). Unfortunately, according to the International Transparency Organization in 2016, Iran rank in administrative corruption is 131 in 176 countries, which is not good for Islamic republic of Iran. Alarming statistics of corruption in the department may create an undesirable image of the Islamic society in the minds of the people and reduce their trust in the system (Afzali, 2013). There are various factors and contexts that can create, expand, and promote administrative corruption potentially. Based on these factors and backgrounds, we can identify factors that have more effect on reduction and elimination of corruption phenomenon in organizations. One of the reducing factors of corruption in organizations, especially government agencies, is public service motivation (Im & Lee, 2012). This is the main reason for this research. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of public service motivation on administrative corruption with mediating role of employees' commitment in public services in the city of Shahr-e-Babak.
Case study
The present study is applied in terms of purpose, and in terms of type, is descriptive and correlative. The statistical population of this study was all public employees of Shahr-e-Babak city. A statistical sample of 260 people were selected by stratified random sampling method and the research questionnaire was distributed among them and 235 of these questionnaires was analyzed. In order to test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling using LISREL8 / 5 software was used.
Materials and Methods
In order to collect the required data, three standard questionnaires with a five-choice Likert option are completely disagree with the score of 1 to completely agree with the score of 5. To measure public service motivation, the standard 24-item questionnaire of Perry (1996) was used. In order to collect information about administrative corruption, the standard questionnaire of Hadavinejad and Javid (2016) with 24 items was used. To assess organizational commitment, Allen & Meyer (1991) standard questionnaire has been used.
To test the reliability of the questionnaires, Cronbach's alpha test was used using SPSS software and composite reliability (CR) index using LISREL8.5 software. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess the inherent consistency of the scale. Both of them was higher than 0.8 and it is considered appropriate, although in many studies alpha and CR higher than 0.7 is also well-accepted (Harris & Harris, 2007).
Discussion and Results
This study aimed to investigate the effect of public services motivation on administrative corruption with regard to the mediating role of employees'commitment in governmental organizations of Shahr-e-Babak city. Findings showed that employees' commitment in relationship between public service motivation and administrative corruption appears as mediating variable. Employees with a higher public service motivation are committed to the organization and have more willingness to stay longer in organization (Bright, 2008; Homberg et al., 2014), and this commitment in turn causes them to avoid negative behaviors and especially administrative corruption (Kim & Kim, 2016).
The results also indicate a negative relationship between public service motivation and administrative corruption. As a result, by increasing public service motivation in government agencies, corruption will decrease. This result is in agreement with Im and Lee(2012) and Kim & Kim(2016). Other results indicate a negative relationship between employees'commitment and administrative corruption. This means that with increasing employees' commitment, corruption will decrease. In this regard Haghighatian et al (2017) concluded that there is an inverse relationship between employees' commitment and tendency to corruption among millions of employees of Tehran municipality that there is an inverse relationship between employees' commitment and tendency to corruption.
Conclusion
According to the results of this study, we propose an increase in public service motivation and employees' commitment to prevent administrators and employees from getting infected with administrative corruption. Identifying the range of motives and stimulations that can be satisfied exclusively in public organizations can help managers to improve the motivation of public employee and reduce their willingness to administrative corruption. In this regard, it is important to try to create and strengthen the feeling of sympathy and sacrifice and commitment to public interest in managers and employees. Managers should use effective mechanisms such as their participation in setting goals and programs related to public interest and also replacing concepts of public service motivation in check list of employees ' performance evaluation.

Keywords

References

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