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DEALING WITH WHITE COLLAR CRIME
A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO THE
PREVENTION OF CORRUPTION
Corruption as a Process
In order to apply any one of the definitions above to a corrupt act, the
act itself must have already taken place. It follows therefore that while the definitions
are appropriate to the detection, investigative, and punishment process, they are of
little assistance in the development of a preventative plan of action. We have therefore
decided to follow the approach of the Netherlands College for Criminal Investigation and
Crime Control which is to identify the elements common to most definitions and to use
these elements both to define corruption and to describe corruption as a process. From
this activity four elements which together describe a corrupt act are identified.
These are:
- Receiving a favour(money, goods, sex, services).
- Doing somebody a favour; the person is able to do this favour because of
his position within the organisation.
[There has to be a relationship between these two favours. The initiative or either giving or receiving a favour can come from either side.] - Damage to the organisation. This damage could done in a variety of ways, including financial, image, ethical, and physical.
- Secrecy.
An act can only be described as corrupt when all four of the above elements are in place. If only one, two or three of the elements are in place, then corruption can be said to be in process. This is an important distinction as the key to our proposed prevention strategy lies in the understanding and recognition of the elements and decision making which follows this recognition. At this stage we must leave these thoughts out in the sun to ripen, but to return to later, as it is essential that we give consideration to the role of the individual in the process before continuing this theme.
The Role of the Individual
In order for corruption to take place individuals must be involved. It is impossible for innate objects to corrupt. If we truly wish to prevent corruption therefore, we must address the problem by focusing on the individual. This of course must be done within the framework of a proper organisational culture in which management is an example to their employees and where procedures protect the employee from exposure, as far as possible, to corruption. But in the end corruption is about the decision made by an individual to begin the process described above. We need to be clear about the pressures on the individuals to give in to corruption and the psychological factors involved. If someone wants to ask a favour, he/she will probably ask it in a way which will make it easy for the answer to be "yes". He/she will most likely utilise one of two strategies for this (Deaux & Wrightman, 1984):
- Foot in the door. He/she will start with a small favour, one which is so small that it would seem ridiculous to refuse it. Once the answer is "yes", he/she will start to ask for bigger favours. Since the first favour has already been agreed to, it is most likely that the target will agree to the second and third and so on.
- Door in the face. This is exactly the opposite to the above. Someone starts with an extreme favour, so extreme that it is easy to refuse. Then he/she will ask a small favour and since the first one has been refused, the target will feel almost obliged to at least do this one to avoid being rude and confrontational.
Of course there are other pressures on individuals to begin the process. Some of these are:
- peer pressure
- a poor atmosphere at work (lack of leadership, constant reorganisation, lack of recognition, fear of affirmative action policies, lack of communication, etc.)
- a paucity of career opportunities
- private problems (relationship, alcohol, drugs)
- cultural - a code of silence
- contact with the public and criminals. Some elements within the organisation will be more exposed to corruption possibilities that others; police with criminals, buyers with suppliers, politicians with lobbyists, etc.
We categorise these pressures as risk factors. When individual accepts any one of these factors the situation becomes risky. It is also a time when the individual must make a decision, asking himself:
- will I accept this risk?;
- will I accept that the situation might degenerate into one of risk?
One has to assume that people very rarely join an organisation with the intention of being corrupt and that they do not suddenly leap into a corrupt situation. It is much more likely that it is a gradual process. And once into the process it is inordinately difficult to get out. The reason why it is so difficult to break out of the process is explained by a social psychological concept, Festinger's 1957 "cognitive dissonance reduction theory" which is very clearly articulated by Deaux & Wrightman in their book "Social psychology in the 80's" the fourth edition of which was published in 1984.
It is human nature for people to want their behaviour and their notions (cognitions) to be in the harmony (consonant). If this is not the case, the situation jars, or in other words it is dissonant and they instinctively feel uncomfortable. They will therefore try to reduce the dissonance. They can do this by changing their cognitions, or by changing their behaviour, or by making one of them, or both, of little importance. We will try to illustrate this with a example: Let us take a buyer who's basic cognition is that he is a good, reliable and trustworthy employee. If he goes wrong, for example by accepting a present from a supplier, he will instinctively feel uncomfortable, particularly if the rules against accepting presents from suppliers are extremely strict, and the process will commence. As the behaviour, or act, has already taken place, he will seek to change his cognitions by trying to rationalise his behaviour in some way. Perhaps by thinking that it does not really matter as every body does it, or it was only a small gift of little consequence. The next time around it will be easier for him to behave in the same way as his cognitions will already be balanced. And as the acts are repeated it will become more and more difficult to break out of the pattern. In fact the only way he can breakout is by admitting to himself that his whole way of thinking is wrong. And it is human nature that this is not the easiest thing to do.
The implications of this theory are that the best time to stop the process of an individual becoming corrupt is at the very beginning, as the longer one waits or the more involved the individual becomes, the more difficult it is to extract from the situation. Another important implication is that in order to be proactive in the prevention of corruption, management should seek to educate the relevant decision making and thought process of individuals within their organisation.