Presenting a model to prevent and reduce employee corruption and its impact on the organization's performance

Document Type : Original Article (Qualitative)

Authors

1 Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shamal University, Amol, Iran

2 Graduated from the Faculty of Humanities, Islamic Azad University, Ayatollah Amoly branch, Amoly, Iran

Abstract
Abstract
The aim of the current research is to design a model for preventing and reducing administrative corruption among employees of administrative organizations and its impact on the organization's performance. In this research, in order to achieve the goal of the research, the qualitative research method is used, and in terms of the goal, it is included in the category of developmental studies. The research community consisted of texts on Nahj ol-Balagha, the Holy Quran, authentic hadiths, and authentic published articles in scientific journals of the world, which were selected after screening 30 articles. Therefore, by means of the granded theory method, the components of the administrative corruption reduction model were extracted, which includes antecedents, consequences and threats of administrative corruption. Administrative corruption, as one of the most common types of corruption, has crossed the boundaries of time and place, and with this feature, it neither belongs to a specific time nor to a specific society. Administrative corruption is not a new phenomenon; its origin and expansion is as old as the history of human societies and the history of organizations and institutions. Some researchers have called administrative corruption "social cancer". This phenomenon has many negative consequences, including its effects on economic growth. It faces foreign investment with obstacles. It reduces the level of human capital and destroys trust in public and private institutions. The findings of this article have led to the identification of underlying variables, effective agents, preventive variables and the consequences of reducing administrative corruption in government organizations.
Introduction
Corruption undermines people's trust in the government and shakes political stability and cultural, national and social norms, and hinders economic growth by destroying fair competition in the labor market and inefficient allocation of resources. Therefore, public trust is one of the social assets that creates and maintains unity in social systems and fosters democratic values. Public trust, as one of the pillars of the governance of any political system and the basis of its acceptance, strengthens the mutual dependence of the state and the nation, while the duty of the state is the proper management of this public trust and increasing its amount. Administrative corruption has resulted in many disorders for human societies; successive wars, violence and uprising against the ruling civilizations, the destruction of organizations and the disintegration of societies have been caused by corruption. In other words, corruption is an illegitimate reward allocated for the offender to commit a breach of duty.
Measuring corruption and presenting it in societies is important because it informs countries about the amount of illegal activities in society, and leads them to fight corruption more effectively, because the presence of corruption in society has many negative consequences; for example: preventing economic development, neutralizing reform policies, disrupting political development and preventing social renewal. Therefore, measuring corruption in societies is one of the ways that creates motivation to confront and fight against it (Gholami, 2019).
Corruption is one of the main factors preventing institutions and societies from achieving their goals, and one of the main obstacles to their growth and development. For this reason, those who have always thought about the health of the human social system and its growth and development, have thought of preventing and fighting against this sinister social phenomenon. Despite the fact that corruption and related crimes exist in many countries of the world, this big social damage is more visible in third world countries. The issue of corruption in our country has always been one of the most important concerns of high-ranking officials, especially the Supreme Leader, and by his order, special branches have been established to deal with its crimes. The fight against corruption (which is actually an important part of the effort to manage the society effectively and efficiently) depends on the accurate knowledge of various factors and its roots. If the goal of the administrative system is to achieve complete health, various factors affecting it should be taken into consideration (Hosseini, Majidi, Ahadi Sadeh, 2020: 92).
Searching for religious and value solutions to fight against administrative corruption is important because our society is an Islamic society; and in such a society, those models and solutions can be answered that are appropriate and compatible with the culture and values ​​that govern it, and in better words, have originated from Religious and Islamic values. Therefore, in this research, we are looking for ways of treatment and in other words, solutions to fight against administrative corruption, which is presented under a comprehensive model, following the verses and quotations. Therefore, the main question of this research is: what is the appropriate model that includes the components and indicators of reducing administrative corruption in administrative organizations?
Theoretical framework
The word ethics is the plural of "ethic" in the dictionary with various meanings such as inherent characteristic, natural state, temperament, nature, essence, (Azar Nosh, 2015). The understanding of what constitutes ethical behavior in the business environment has experienced a profound change over time (McWilliams, 2006; Melnyk et al, 2003; Metwally et al, 2019). While for a long time, matching the monopolies created by public organizations with the legal regulations governing them was the main concern of professional ethical behavior (Goebel et al, 2012), today ethical behaviors are beyond mere legal compliance and are formed based on expectations (Maignan et al, 2002). Ethical culture is the main part of organizational culture. Ethical culture evaluates employees' views on the seriousness of implementing the code of ethics and the degree of alignment of the code of ethics with professional ethics (Valentine et al, 2013). Also, employees prefer to work for companies with transparency and ethical norms (Treviño & Nelson, 2016). Therefore, people prefer companies in which ethics are institutionalized (Garavan & McGuire, 2010). If employees' perception of ethics is low, it will lead to general conflict, which will lead to employee turnover (Kancharla & Dadhich, 2021:3).
Corruption in the Holy Quran and hadiths
The word corruption is derived from the root of corrupt and means ruin. In this interpretation, it may be in external existence or human actions and affairs or divine decrees and laws that lead to the invalidation of its change and destruction (Javadi Amoli, 2011).
Administrative corruption
Corruption is one of the global phenomena existed since the beginning of early forms of government, and it is considered an important factor in causing damage to policies and public interests. Corruption is defined as the extent to which public power is used for personal interests, either micro, or macro corruption; as well as state capture by elites and personal interests. Corruption mostly takes the form of bribery and extortion; but it includes misuse of internal information, procurement fraud, embezzlement of public money and money laundering (Hawizi, 2017).
The issue of corruption can be considered as a complex and ambiguous issue that refers to the deviant behavior of bureaucracies, and its root cause is disobeying cultural and social norms or violating the expectations of citizens. There are various factors and fields that can cause the emergence, expansion and promotion of administrative corruption in a potential and actual form. The solutions more effective in reducing and eliminating the phenomenon of administrative corruption in organizations can be identified based on these factors and fields (Ghasemi, Montazeri, 2018).
Research methodology
In this research, qualitative research method will be used to achieve the research objective. The current research is developmental in terms of the goal, because it takes a step towards explaining the pattern of reducing administrative corruption in public organizations. The collection of data in this article was also done by examining library studies; and in this way, qualitative data will be collected. Also, in terms of the type of method, this research is included in the category of descriptive-exploratory studies; in addition, the method of qualitative implementation of the research is the granded theory method to analyze the collected data.
Research findings
It should be noted that during these encodings, the researcher collects data about different people, events and situations by using theoretical sampling and according to the concepts that emerged from the data, which will provide a richer picture of the resulting concepts and categories. By using Max Kyuda software, the selective coding of the categories is refined, and a theoretical framework emerges through these processes. 41 open codes (concepts), 12 core codes (dimensions and components) and 4 selective codes (main categories) were counted. The findings of the qualitative section showed that the main and core categories in the form of inhibiting variables, effective factors, consequences and background variables were upgraded to a higher abstract level and finally the research paradigm model was presented.
Conclusion
No country can claim to be free from any economic corruption. Iran's economy has been facing this ominous phenomenon for years. Wide monopolies, rent structure, low level of quality of laws and wide lack of transparency have caused Iran to be considered among the corrupt countries. Transparency International Organization annually reviews and ranks the situation of all countries in terms of the level of corruption. One of the parameters for evaluating the economic and social status of countries is the economic corruption index. This type of corruption is the abuse of people's trust for personal gain, which usually appears in the form of bribery, embezzlement, cheat, fraud, and extortion. Although the Iranian society is a society with religious and national tendencies, all in which consider corruption as an ugly phenomenon and have always emphasized on fighting against it, we are observing the spread of corruption in the society which has blocked many social and national developments and put huge costs on the shoulders of the country and ultimately the people.
According to the results of the research, the following suggestions are provided:

Clarification of regulations and laws related to the performance of the organization
Separation and optimization of executive tasks from headquarters areas and creation of logical interaction between said areas.
Revision and modification of systems, methods and procedures with the tendency of simplifying work steps, streamlining operations, reducing time wastage and increasing satisfaction of customers and beneficiaries.
Designing, compiling and implementing executive research and projects to improve the state of the country's administrative system in various fields.
Designing, planning and implementing the necessary training programs to improve the appropriate human quality of the organization based on the determined needs.
Maintaining the level of employees' income in line with inflation
Greater advertising and transparency, spreading information and creating awareness
Establishment of communication systems with clients to control existing organizational factors
Strengthening internal controls in organizations, including periodic inspections and protection
Establishment of appropriate and stable legal framework and increasing strengthening of law enforcers
Simplification of laws: the more state-owned the economy is, the greater the rent and lack of transparency. Therefore, on one hand, removing some unreasonable restrictions governing economic relations in the customs, commerce, business environment and banking sectors; and on the other hand, simplifying and clarifying the laws and regulations governing various economic and administrative organizations and institutions of the country, as well as adoption of effective regulatory laws can eliminate corruption-causing factors.
Independence of the judiciary and regulatory institutions: As long as the judiciary is independent, the courts threaten the corrupt interactions of the powerful in a country. The judicial and supervisory system, by avoiding factional and political issues, can be effective on the amount of corruption by emphasizing the time required to deal with the corrupt and the proportionality of the severity of the punishment. Timely handling of corruptors' cases and applying appropriate punishment regardless of the person's position and status is an effective factor in preventing corruption.
Improving the salary situation of employees: poverty and lack of financial support for people's lives is one of the causes of corruption. Therefore, anything that increases national income per capita, strengthens growth and especially improves the income of government employees will be an obstacle to the emergence of corruption. Some studies show that low salaries force civil servants to supplement their income through illegitimate means.

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Volume 7, Issue 1 - Serial Number 23
Spring 2025
Pages 232-255

  • Receive Date 27 June 2024
  • Revise Date 18 September 2024
  • Accept Date 17 December 2024