Controlling petty corruption in public administrations of developing countries through digitalization: An opportunity theory informed study of Ghana customs

Abstract

Despite myriad anti-corruption interventions, including digitalization-based efforts, petty corruption in public administrations of developing countries persists, undermining socioeconomic development. Extant research that links corruption to social and economic conditions has yielded inconclusive findings on whether digitalization can reduce corruption. Informed by opportunity theory from the field of criminology, which suggests that opportunities – rather than motives or systemic factors – beget crimes, we explore an alternative approach in this study: how digitalization could reduce the opportunities for petty corruption. We draw on a case study of the 30-year digitalization effort at Ghana’s customs administration based on fieldwork, including 91 in-depth interviews with current and former customs officials, importers, clearing agents, banks, regulators, and other stakeholders. Our findings suggest that information technology enables corruption control over time by reducing corruption opportunities through sociotechnical reconfiguration of work practices and organizational arrangements.

Keywords:

• Anti-corruption
• developing countries
• digitalization
• Ghana
• petty corruption
• public administration

Notes

1 The term digitalization is used to mean a “range of sociotechnical changes resulting from the adoption of digital technologies” (Legner et al. 2017, 301).

2 ASYCUDA or the Automated System for Customs Clearance.

3 TradeNet, an electronic data interchange (EDI), was deployed to integrate all stakeholders involved in the customs clearance process.

4 Sociotechnical refers to the heterogeneous ensemble of processes, material artefacts and social elements (Leavitt 1964; Sawyer and Jarrahi 2014).

5 The shifts in administration paradigms have been associated with digitalization initiatives that have sought to change sociotechnical configurations of each administration type to overcome dysfunctions and inefficiencies associated with corruption. For example, since the 1950s, back office, rule-based information systems translating regulation into streamlined service have been deployed to support bureaucracies (Danziger et al. 1982; Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, and Tinkler 2006). New Public Management (NPM) reforms have occurred through IT systems that enable process redesign and cross-agency infrastructures (Aydinli, Brinkkemper, and Ravesteyn 2009; Bernardi, 2009). Reforms based on prescriptions of Washington-based development organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF, emphasized fundamental economic reforms and pro-market interventions, and similarly required inter-organizational IT infrastructures to streamline multi-stakeholder processes of private-public-partnership (De Wulf 2004). By supporting work according to such administration paradigms, digitalization has supported administration reforms through sociotechnical reconfiguration as old work practices are disrupted and new work practices emerge.

6 Bureaucracy, which Max Weber (1978) said was a means to overcome traditional patrimonial administration characterized by arbitrariness and corruption, in many developing countries has failed to bring about a fair, impartial, rule-based administration. Rather, many developing countries have versions of bureaucracy that hybridize with traditional patrimonial practices (Eisenstadt 1973; Erdmann and Engel 2006). Reforms to address the shortcomings of public administrations in developing countries are typically guided by models and principles borne out of the experience of developed countries (Bale and Dale 1998; McCourt 1998; Sulle 2010; Wallis and Dollery 2001). This includes even models and principles from the private sector in developing countries (Dunleavy and Hood 1994; Hood 1995). For instance, reforms have sought to re-engineer government structure, culture, processes, and to emphasize client-orientation and quality (Halachmi 1995; Osborne and Gaebler 1992).