Learning effects of anti-corruption reform in public organisations: explanations from social psychological theory

ABSTRACT

Existing studies based on institutional or rationalist approaches have limitations in explaining changes in individual ethical behaviour and thus propose social psychological models that can offer alternative explanations. We conduct surveys of over 5,000 civil servants in South Korea before and after the implementation of an anti-corruption policy in 2016. Our analysis shows the role of cognitive and social changes in shaping individual motivation to engage in ethical behaviour. Civil servants who are more aware of the policy are not only willing to behave more ethically than those less aware but also increase their motivation to do so over time.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-corruption reform
• social psychological theory
• public service ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2051064

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Principal-agent theory faces the same challenge in that it assumes that public servants update their beliefs and preferences after the enforcement of anti-corruption measures in a quasi-automatic process.

2. https://www.acrc.go.kr/en/board.do?command=searchDetailPrint&menuId=020501&boardNum=69411&con fId = 62 (accessed 30 October 2019).

3. From the collective action perspective, if gift-giving culture was a prevalent norm among a certain group of people in the public sector, then people who did not give a gift to them might have been unfairly treated by them. While there was no upper limit on the value of such gifts before the adoption of the Act, the new law not only set a clear upper limit but also made public service providers feel reluctant to accept any gifts of an excessive value.

4. ‘South Korea Tightens Rules Against Gifts to Fight Graft.’ New York Times. 3 March 2015.

5. Source: The Handbook of the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, the Anti-corruption and Civil Rights Commission of South Korea. http://www.acrc.go.kr/acrc/board.do?command=searchDetail&menuId=0502070101&method=searchDetailViewInc&boardNum=61617&currPageNo=1&confId=128&conConfId=128&conTabId=0&conSearchCol=BOARD_TITLE&conSearchSort=A.BOARD_REG_DATE+DESC%2C+BOARD_NUM+DESC (accessed 19 August 2019).

6. ‘South Korea’s new graft law strikes deep into corporate culture.’ Financial Times. 26 September 2016.

7. https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20180921089400001 (accessed 23 August 2019).

8. Source: The official website of the Ministry of Personnel Management (http://www.mpm.go.kr/english/ accessed 19 August 2019). Most central and local public servants of Korea are promoted based on a rule-bound system. For example, it takes three years to be promoted from grade 9 to 8, five years from grade 8 to 7, seven years from grade 7 to 6, and nine years from grade 6 to 5, on average (Lee and Park 2021c). Public servants ranked at grade 5 or lower are assessed for promotion through a written series of tests, while senior civil servants who are ranked at grade 4 or higher are evaluated for promotion by the Promotion Review Committee (Kim 2010).

9. The Anticorruption and Civil Rights Commission Publications.

10. In addition, the sampling frame varies across years, as our project intended to draw samples from central and local civil servants separately every alternate year. The response rates of our surveys differed slightly, ranging from 50 to 60%.

11. Survey samples collected by Hankook Research (https://www.hrc.co.kr/eng/) have been broadly used in social science research and media. To access the statistical yearbook, see http://www.mpm.go.kr/mpm/.

12. The human research subjects aspect of our research protocol was approved by our university’s Institutional Review Board.

13. The reporting of misconduct resonates closely with measures of ‘whistle-blowing’ (Near and Miceli 1985). However, given the breadth and contents of the Anti-Corruption Law in South Korea, our interest is in ethical behaviour more broadly rather than whistle-blowing narrowly. For a recent study that examines the challenge of measuring corruption, especially, perceptions of corruption, see Abreu and Gomes (2021).

14. In 2015 before the Kim Young-Ran law was adopted, we asked the question, ‘I understand guidelines or regulations related to public service ethics’ to estimate civil servants’ overall awareness and familiarity.

15. Our data show that 33.4% of respondents answered that they were better aware of the procedure to file a complaint under the Kim Young-Ran law in 2016, and the number increased to 38.3% in 2017. Regarding respondents who were more familiar with regulations related to the law, 43.1% of respondents answered thus in 2016, and the number increased to 50.12% in 2017. The data show a clear increase in the proportion of respondents who answered the two questions affirmatively, compared to less than 30% in 2015. The data indicate that, although a majority of public servants became familiar with regulations related to the new anti-corruption law after a year, it seems it took longer for them to fully understand the specific procedure to file a complaint under the law. This is not so surprising, because given the fact that the law clashed with the country’s traditions, it is expected that a large proportion of civil servants might have been initially resistant to learning about its specific procedure for taking action. According to the former Chairperson of the Anti-corruption and Civil Rights Commission, this is why the Commission published a handbook of the law and scheduled training programmes to provide detailed instructions to all civil servants.

16. It is the aggregate proportion of respondents who answered ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ to the survey question ‘You are willing to file an allegation of misconduct in your organisation’ for the dependent variable.

17. https://freedomhouse.org/country/south-Korea/freedom-world/2018 (accessed 30 December 2019).

18. https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/asia_pacific_makes_little_to_no_progress_on_anti_

corruption (accessed 30 December 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of Republic of Korea and National Research Foundation of Korea (BK21FOUR Toward Empathic Innovation: Through Platform Governance Education & Research Programs) [4199990114294]; Public Performance Management Research Center at Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University [0678-20200017].

Notes on contributors

Don S. Lee

Don S. Lee is an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University.

Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling

Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling is a professor at the University of Nottingham.

Soonae Park

Soonae Park is a professor at Seoul National University.