Fight against administrative corruption within governmental organizations from motto to practice (case study: Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance)

Administrative corruption in a simple definition is violation of a law for personal benefits by utilization of job position. It is a phenomenon within today’s world as one of the most important obstacles on the way of societies’ progress. The impact of different factors in forming corruption has given it a complicated nature. Administrative corruption is a correlative issue and it is different according to value system of each society. This article is trying to present a solution in order to fight against administrative corruption through classification of staff with the help of explaining the relation of their perception, sensation and commitment towards corruption and corrupted situations. Present study in terms of purpose is developmental-practical, and in terms of execution and based upon research purposes is a survey. The study population is the staff of Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance in 2015. In order to explain perception, sensation and the behavior of staff, the questionnaire of administrative corruption is designed in three dimensions: perceptive aspect (cognitive) which includes items for assessing the status of awareness and recognition of staff from instances and consequences of administrative corruption; sensation aspect which includes items for assessing the vision and tendencies of staff towards corruption, and behavioral aspect which is formed from items for assessing the behavior of staff in facing with corruptive situations. In order to identify the reasons of corruption two questionnaires of “National identity” and “Organizational culture” have been designed. The result of the research was that the perpetrators of corruption can be divided into three categories. First category is the staff that their perception is positive, it means that they have adequate cognition from manifestations and corruption consequences and their feeling about corruption is negative, it means that they consider it as an ominous phenomenon, but they are guilty of corruption. Second category is the staff that their perception is positive, they don’t see corruption as an ominous phenomenon. Consequently, their feeling toward corruption is positive, and they perpetrate it. The third category is the staff whose perception is negative, their feeling is uncertain, and they perpetrate it. The behavior of these categories will be interpreted in form of related theories. The significant note is that despite the tendency average to practice administrative corruption among governmental staff is lower than assumed average and it indicates that there is a protection of corruption perpetration, but the rank of our country is not favorable the International Organization report. This warning made the researchers to provide new solutions to help resolving this social issue by reviewing current solutions for prevention, and fighting against administrative corruption, regarding the richness of evaluating system in Iran.

Keywords: corruption, administrative corruption, corruption perception, sense of corruption, corruption behavior, organizational culture, national identity.
JEL Classification: D73, M12, Z10