Novel Insight Into Corruption

The United Nations, World Bank, and the global coalition against corruption, Transparency International, define corruption as 'use of public office for private gain'. Fully agreeing with this definition, I have tried to look for the cause of corruption and reached the conclusion that WHEN GREED MEETS OPPORTUNITY, CORRUPTION TAKES PLACE. This can be reduced to a neat mathematical equation C = G X O, or C is G times O, where C is corruption, G greed, and O opportunity. Following from this is the painful truth that so long as a greedy person will have opportunity, corruption will be a fact of life.

Even if corruption is quite ubiquitous, organisations, big and small, must find ways to overcome it, if they have to last long and truly serve the society. In the following, it will be seen how this could be done.

By the very nature of their responsibilities, the few persons at the top of any organisation, profit or non-profit, have immense opportunity. So, even if they have a small amount of greed that will combine with huge opportunity to result into a significant level of corruption. Therefore, for zero corruption among the top persons, greed has to be zero, and there can be no compromise with this requirement. These zero-greed top people should promote a no-tolerance-for-corruption culture in the organisation, select near-zero-greed direct reports, and act as an exemplar to them to further reduce their levels of greed. Quick and heavy punishment to those found indulging in corruption would act as a deterrent and further reduce the general level of greed across the organisation. The top leadership should also install required systems and procedures and use right technology in order to place effective curbs on opportunity for corruption available to their direct reports. They will, thus, have small G(reed) and small O(pportunity), resulting into small C(orruption). And coming down the various management tiers like this, the entire organisation will have very little corruption.