Corruption in the Public Organizations. Towards a Model of Costbenefit Analysis for the Anticorruption Strategies

Abstract

The paper aims to evaluate how theanticorruption strategies contribute towardsminimizing the corruption phenomenon in thepublic organizations, with special referenceto the strategies used in the Romanian publicadministration and health system. Based on someessential features stated by Banfield (1975) withregard to the capacity of public organizations tominimize corruption inside the organizations, theauthors conducted two parallel researches in thepublic administration system and in the healthsystem in Romania. Thus, the researches revealeda paradox in the finality of the analyzed publicorganizations, which focus either exclusively onethical behavior or on other objectives such as:effectiveness, flexibility, dynamics etc. In thecontext of some very interesting studies, such asthose conducted by Rose-Ackerman (1975, 1999),the premises of our research are based on the ideathat “the anticorruption strategies should orientfirstly towards the improvement of the economic,technical and operational efficiency” of the publicorganization. Therefore, the authors speak about“optimal” level of corruption rather than “zero” levelof corruption. The authors justify this fact throughthe costs of supporting the anticorruption strategies,their direct impact on organizational effectivenessand performance.