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Corruption is a wicked issue affecting public sector organizations across the world. Even though research in this field is blooming, little is known about the strategies that could be implemented to prevent and/or fight the occurrence of public corruption. The purpose of this paper is to fill the extant gaps in the scientific knowledge, providing insights into the strategies that can be use to fight public corruption.

Using a longitudinal approach, the paper points out some evidence on the perceived effectiveness of different public governance initiatives in reducing the risks of public corruption in Europe. More specifically, 31 Western European countries were involved in this analysis. The research covered a seven years’ time-span, ranging from January 2010 to December 2016.

Rule of law (RL) was found to be an important ingredient of the recipe for successful anti-corruption policies. Conversely, political stability (PS) turned out to entail greater incentives to public corruption. Whilst voice and accountability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality and control of corruption were correlates of perceived anti-corruption performance, they were not found to act as relevant regressors in the panel model.

The generalizability of the research results is limited by the geographical boundaries of this study; besides, there is the risk that the study findings were affected by the consequences of the recent financial turbulences concerning Western European countries.

RL is momentous to realize the full potential of anti-corruption policies: in fact, it contributes in reducing the incentives to improperly use public assets, enhancing the proper functioning of public sector organizations. Alternatively, PS may induce public officials and citizens to collude in order to capture public resources.

The paper contributes in shedding light on the perceived effectiveness of anti-corruption initiatives, paving the way for further conceptual and practical developments.

Deterioration of integrity is featured in public service across the globe, including Tanzania. Local government authorities (LGAs) are among the areas where such practices have been reported. However, factors compromising integrity in LGAs receives less attention from the literature. Citing 19 LGAs from Tanzania, this study aims to examine contributes to this debate.

A sequential explanatory research design was applied. Data were collected from 54 respondents through survey questionnaires, interviews and a documentary review. The study was guided by Hoekstra theoretical framework for assessing integrity practices in LGAs.

The findings revealed that maintaining integrity in Tanzania's LGAs is still challenging. Poor institutionalization processes, institutional unpreparedness, insufficient integrity policy execution and being less informed of moral development of recruited public servants are said to compromise integrity in Tanzania LGAs. This qualifies to conclude that institutional pathologies and moral history of public servants are the major factors contributing to integrity deterioration in Tanzania LGAs. This has resulted in subpar service delivery and the waste of public funds.

This study confined itself to Tanzania LGAs. More studies could be conducted to LGAs in other countries struggling with the same problem. On the same ground, moral development should be studied more to ensure that the public service receives ethical public servants in the future.

The theoretical framework for assessing integrity systems in LGAs as proposed by Hoekstra (2022) could be applied by other countries struggling with the same challenge.

LGAs must implement an integrity-based self-reflection technique that will allow them to assess their current condition and come up with solutions. Furthermore, institutional policies must be strengthened to govern ethical behavior in LGAs.

Auditing is a traditional function in the German system of local public finance. Its’ basic mission is to control local finances for accuracy, to avoid misuse of public resources and to support local councils. The priority of auditing is the annual financial statement and accounting, still. Performance is of limited relevance. Given the federal setting of 13 territorial states, the system is complex and fragmented. Another German peculiarity is a parallel structure of financial supervision executed by different public bodies having a particular focus on balanced budget and debt. Local auditing, generally, organises in a two-level structure. The lower level is part of the respective local government, the higher-level is part of the state administration. Beyond this basic setting, there are manifold structural options in place lacking transparency and a clear separation of duties. Private involvement in local auditing is very limited. Legislation guarantees independence of auditing with regard to personal independence, autonomy in auditing issues and methods. Local auditing faces several challenges, as local governments do. However, there is no sound discussion on reforms.

This paper discusses the evolving nature of the symbolic meaning of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Exploring the kratophanous power of soccer in Brazil, we seek to explain how the relationship that Brazilians had with the 2014 FIFA World Cup reflects profound changes in a mutating society that has deep emotional connections with soccer but at the same time has started to reject the misuse of public resources and struggles to see corruption as a fact of life.

The authors conducted a netnography on Facebook communities and on Instagram, reviewed documentaries and short films, as well as press articles on the subject. Data was collected both retrospectively and concurrently. Analysis used open coding, moving up from the emic meanings extracted from the texts to an etic account of the phenomena (Cherrier & Murray, 2007; Thompson, 1997; Thompson & Haytko, 1997).

We argue that the duality of the Brazilian culture and the kratophanous power of soccer help understand the evolving nature of the relationship Brazilians had with the 2014 FIFA World Cup. We sustain that soccer in Brazil is viewed both as a sport – representing democracy and the hope of social mobility – and as an industry – echoing dissatisfaction with the status quo. Even if ideologically opposed to what the event represented, consumers were bound by very strong cultural connections built around soccer as a sport, a national passion. This changing nature of feelings and attitudes echoes marketplace tensions of a country passing through a democratization maturity process and of a culture in which its citizens find it easier to attempt to be many things at the same time than to take a stand.

This research analyzes the role of social tensions and national passions in relation to a global industry (soccer) and a mega event (the FIFA World Cup). We have looked at the influence of macro cultural forces and tension forces in a sporting event as our findings cannot be understood outside the context of network-based power (Labrecque, vor dem Esche, Mathwick, Novak, & Hofacker, 2013) with Brazilians mobilizing the structure of social networks in favor of their contextual interests. The tense and dynamic political environment in which this research was conducted shed some light on why the #naovaitercopa changed its meaning overtime.

The context of this research contributes to the literature on boycotting (Kozinets & Handelman, 2004; Lee, Motion, & Conroy, 2009), considering that most previous studies had not extensively explored situations where protests arise, obtain significant engagement, yet end up being unsuccessful. We answers the call made by Izberk-Bilgin (2010) for understanding how and why consumer attitudes toward certain types of consumption may change overtime and we demonstrate how the FIFA World Cup possesses kratophanous power in Brazil, and how this characteristic, which is strongly rooted in local culture, contributed to the failure of the boycott.

This paper examines the economic and political determinants of public procurement corruption in Uganda. Using data from 548 respondents in the public, private and NGO sectors of Uganda, the paper identifies critical economic and political determinants of public procurement corruption in Uganda. All over the world, the attention of policy makers, academics, development partners, the general public, civil society organizations and politicians has been drawn to the negative effects of corruption on development and the delivery of effective services. Corruption; a phenomenon as old as man himself (Shabbir & Anwar, 2007) has recently risen to the top of the development agenda, particularly in the developing economies. It is this recognition that leads to investigation of why corruption exists and what makes it so differently widespread among countries (Serra, 2004). Unlike in the past where corruption research was the preserve of economists and political scientists, today other disciplines like public procurement have significant interest. This paper compares the emergent results with local and international literature. It presents a number of theoretical and managerial implications for addressing the “disastrous monster” of procurement corruption in the context of the developing world.

It is increasingly expected that universities, besides research and teaching, should perform a third task as regional engines of innovation and economic growth. This paper discusses the role transformation and its demands upon university and faculty, including academic entrepreneurship. The empirical part consists of an exploration of senior faculty’s thinking of the new situation, using cause maps about two key domains: university‐corporate cooperation for applied research and direct faculty entrepreneurship. Broadly, the expected root causes and conflicts emerge in the faculty’s thought patterns, but cause maps show and help analyse the subjective situation as a system. The paper concludes with discussing university policy implications and options for further research.

This paper aims to investigate the roles of corruption and tax allocation inefficiency in moderating the effect of tax aggressiveness on sustainable welfare.

This research uses a fixed-effect multiple regression analysis for 55,438 firm-year observations covering 22 countries from 2007 to 2017.

For less (more) tax-aggressive observations, corruption and tax allocation inefficiency strengthen the negative (positive) effect of tax aggressiveness on sustainable welfare. The results are in line with public choice and functionalism theories that suggest that private investments can increase welfare when governments are dysfunctional.

This paper shows that the effect of tax aggressiveness on sustainable welfare depends on tax aggressiveness, corruption and tax allocation inefficiency.

This paper implies that governments should reduce their corruption levels and increase tax allocation efficiency because private investments are ineffective in the long run.

Because of increasing awareness of sustainability issue, sustainable welfare is considered more relevant than traditional welfare. Hence, empirical studies on the effect of tax aggressiveness on sustainable welfare are crucial. This paper adds the literature by combining public choice and functionalism theories to investigate the moderating roles of corruption and tax allocation inefficiency in this issue.

The purpose of this paper is to address dimensions of crisis as applied to the profession of librarianship from a public administration frame of reference. For librarians to retain professional status, the human element of librarianship must be promoted through an emphasis on their educational mission, inspired by public administration's professional code of ethics. Within this process, librarians must promote themselves as educators, embracing the concept of information literacy as their field of jurisdiction.

Reflecting an interdisciplinary approach, literature from public administration and library science is used to support these points.

A robust professional education and affiliation with professional associations reinforces the informational asymmetries of professionals through specialized instruction and knowledge sharing, which will lead to not only a strengthened profession, but also to opportunities for leadership.

To reinforce professionalism, the human element of librarianship must be promoted through an enhanced emphasis on the educational mission of librarians within the ethical framework of the profession. The place for this to occur is within schools of graduate education and professional associations.

This discussion addresses dimensions of crisis as applied to the profession of librarianship from a public administration frame of reference. The rationale for this approach is that library and information science can benefit from elements of the public administration school of thought regarding professionalism, in general, and ethical codes, in particular.

The police in India do not meet the standards of legitimacy. This chapter examines a significant question – why in the largest democracy police are deemed illegitimate and untrustworthy?

The chapter draws from the literature about police role and functioning in India. Data from the Crime in India and other publications is utilized to assess the nature of policing and interactions with the citizens. Since the police derive their legitimacy from that of the government, the nature of politics and its impact upon the police organization is assessed from various reports and publications.

There is significant evidence to suggest that in India, citizens distrust the police and fear the officers while the police too remain mired in corruption, brutality, violating the rights of citizens. Two arguments are made to explain the reasons for the illegitimacy of police system: first, that the police model is incompatible with the plural and diverse democratic framework of the country. Second, that the political leaders have vitiated the democratic polity itself, preventing the growth of independent public institutions that could hold them accountable. All these have serious consequences for the health and vitality of the largest democracy in the world.

This chapter provides evidence about incompatibility of colonial policing with liberal democratic order and argues that political leadership is largely responsible for the illegitimacy of police and other public institutions.

This paper aims to identify key learnings around the concept of “grey corruption” by systematically reviewing the extant literature. The concept is addressed in terms of areas of alleged misconduct often considered “minor” or “borderline” in relation to “black corruption”. Common examples include favourable treatment of friends and relatives by public officials, receipt of gifts, excessive expenditures and pork barrelling, influence peddling through donations and lies and false promises. The focus of this study is on definitions, extent, public perspectives, explanations and evidence of promising prevention strategies.

Relevant sources were sought using systematic keyword searches of major criminological and political databases, a media database and relevant government and non-government websites, up to the end of December 2019.

The main findings were that there is no single accepted definition of grey corruption but that the concept remains useful, practice is often extensive, it is generally at odds with public opinion, opportunity is a key factor in its incidence and prevention requires the enactment and enforcement of clear principles.

Media-reported cases were too numerous to analyse in detail for the present study.

Efforts to improve integrity in government need to take account of the concept. Rules require clarification and communication. Enforcement needs improvement. More experiments are needed in prevention.

This paper captures a range of integrity issues of importance to the public but often downgraded or dismissed by politicians.

This paper is unique in reporting the results of a systematic search of the international literature on the topic.