Determinants of Students’ Willingness to Engage in Corruption in an Academic Setting: an Empirical Study

Abstract

Corruption in higher education has raised concern among governments, citizens, and the education community worldwide. However, few papers have sought to explore the students' willingness to engage in corrupt practices at the university level. The present study aimed to examine the influence of different corrupt behaviours and perceived corruption among peers on the corrupt intention of university students. 120 undergraduate students participated in a quasi-experimental design divided in 3 treatments (control, lowcorruption acceptance, high-corruption acceptance) to rate their willingness to engage in favouritism and embezzlement behaviours. Results pointed out that students were more prone to committing a non-monetary behaviour favouritism-than a monetary behaviour -embezzlement-. Furthermore, there were not significant differences between the groups of control and high-corruption acceptance; while only the group of low-corruption acceptance showed significant lower rates when compared to the control and the highcorruption acceptance's group. Practical recommendations need to address students' perceptions of different corrupt practices, focusing on designing ethical training programmes aimed to raise awareness on the negative consequences of non-monetary activities. Future research directions could generate empirical support to prove if students are able to recognize the underlying mechanisms of subtle corrupt practices.

Students’ Perceptions of University Corruption in a Spanish Public University: A Path Analysis

“…Different scholars have demonstrated that corrupt intention is a valid instrument to study corruption ( Dong et al, 2012 ; León et al, 2013 ; Julian and Bonavia, 2020a ; Chen et al, 2021 ). The question to measure corrupt intention was the following one: “If this situation happened to you in real life, how likely is it that you would accept this proposal?” Response scale ranges from 1 (I would not accept it at all) to 5 (I would certainly accept it).…”

“…Closely related to this hypothesis, ethical judgment has been found to have an influence on people’s attitudes toward corruption ( Jones, 1991 ; Julian and Bonavia, 2020a ). Many situations are evaluated within a moral framework, and so justifications play a key role in influencing people’s decision to take part (or not) in a corrupt activity ( Gino et al, 2009 ).…”

“…Most of the research has analyzed corrupt behaviors from a cross-national perspective ( Chapman and Lindner, 2016 ). To our knowledge, only a few papers have shown the relationship among students’ individual predictors when engaging in a corrupt behavior ( Julian and Bonavia, 2020a , b ). For example, a survey with 1,588 students showed that perceiving corruption as rampant among peers was associated with a rise in the willingness to offer a bribe ( Shaw et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Students have access to different degrees, official masters, and Ph.D. programs. Although academic dishonesty has been analyzed in Spain ( Comas-Forgas and Sureda-Negre, 2016 ), studies on individual predictors of Spanish university corruption are still scarce ( Julian and Bonavia, 2020a , 2021 ). Furthermore, nearly two-thirds of Spanish citizens rated corruption as a major problem in their country ( Transparency International, 2016 ).…”

“…When trying to decide whether to blow the whistle, people take ethical issues into account ( Dungan et al, 2015 ). Scientific literature has shown that moral values play a crucial role in reporting corrupt behavior, and situational factors (e.g., the organization’s encouragement to report dishonest activities) complement individual factors in explaining the justifiability of corrupt intention ( Moore, 2008 , 2015 ; Julian and Bonavia, 2020a ). In other words, people will conceptualize wrongdoing as justifiable if they think it is not harmful to the organization.…”