CORRUPTION, ETHICAL DILEMMAS, AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN PUBLIC SECTOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Abstract
It is highly vulnerable to systemic corruption and ethical compromises with the public sector project management set in a background of the high degree of politicism, lack of resources and multiple stakeholders. This paper deals with a structural conception of corruption, and addresses moral and accountability issues of public works, health and civil projects. It is grounded in the Principal-Agent Theory and Public Choice Theory that focuses on the dynamics between information asymmetry, misaligned incentives, political pressure, and project governance and public trust. It uncovers and examines the pathologies in the public procurement system – rent seeking, collusive bidding, and strategic misrepresentation. Moreover, we explore how state-of-the-art integrity practices, such as Open Contracting Data Standards (OCDS), independent oversight bodies and efficient and effective whistleblower protection provisions apply. We feel a change should be made from the compliance-based metrics to a digital, transparent, objective and institutionalised system of accountability to address ethical challenges. Finally, the paper presents a framework of public integrity of public sector projects and suggests that the success of an institutional project cannot be solely measured by the financial or physical outcome, but also by the preservation of institutional legitimacy and public trust.
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Published in Journal of Management & Corporate Sustainablity
ISSN: 2616 - 1292
This article appears in our peer-reviewed academic journal
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