The normalization of corruption in organizations (2003) [pdf]

https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/2003-ashforth.pdf

by rendx • 5 months ago

303 137 5 months ago

daedrdev• 5 months ago

The US supreme court allowed thank you gifts for politicians to not be considered bribes somehow in a 2024 ruling, I think that alone might break the US.

treetalker• 5 months ago

lest we forget luxury fishing trips, RVs, real-estate debt payoffs, or payoffs of relatives' tuition

jacquesm2• 5 months ago

The US Supreme Court is the very worst a supreme court could be. They've been thoroughly co-opted and will only start to see the light when it is their asses that are on the line.

simonh5• 5 months ago

The whole way the Judicial system in the US is beholden to politicians, and is thoroughly politicised looks completely horrific to me in the UK. Even the election officials responsible for overseeing voting are politicians.

Combined with this elected King George III presidential nonsense (not just king in general either, specifically the powers George III had in the 1780s) and I despair sometimes. Get yourselves a decent parliamentary system. If you avoid proportional representation it works fine. Unfortunately the US population is somehow convinced the current US system is modern and up to date. They'll probably still think that in another 200 years.

gniv• 5 months ago

Very insightful on how this corruption develops:

"How can a group hold a worldview so at odds with the wider culture and not appear to be greatly conflicted by it? The answer may lie in the distinction between particularism and universalism. An individual develops social identities specific to the social domains, groups and roles – and accompanying subcultures – that he or she occupies (e.g. manager, mother, parishioner, sports fan). [...]

In the case of corruption, this myopia means that an otherwise ethically-minded individual may forsake universalistic or dominant norms about ethical behavior in favor of particularistic behaviors that favor his or her group at the expense of outsiders. [...]

This tendency to always put the ingroup above all others clearly paves the way for collective corruption."

dundercoder• 5 months ago

It’s like they worked at my last workplace

simonh5• 5 months ago

The brain actually has specific neurological system that compartmentalise reasoning contexts in different social contexts, so we operate according to different sets of assumptions and rules of behaviour and reasoning in different kinds of situations.

rramadass5• 5 months ago

Can you share some resources on the above?

justonceokay2• 5 months ago

Unless you’re autistic

Paracompact5• 5 months ago

The author cites Arendt a fair bit, whose claim to fame was that entirely ordinary people could become voluntary instruments of atrocity.

I think the belief of ordinary people most likely to dispose them to atrocity is that of prioritizing the ingroup. Once we believe that the members of one's own family, or company, or country, carry more moral value than others, we're doomed to a descent limited only by our ability to make these world-worsening trades.

When I was a child, my dad would sometimes engage in small acts of corruption to please me or my brother. Taking somebody else's spot, telling white lies to get more than his share of a rationed good, that sort of thing. It never sat right with me. "Family first" has a very ominous ring to me.

reacweb• 5 months ago

Yes, the slogan "America first" is a forerunner of the worst kind of imperialism.

lynx97• 5 months ago

What you describe is deepest human nature. We are tribal, period. No amount of morales will change that, no matter how it sits with you personally.

carlosjobim• 5 months ago

An even worse sign is when we believe that the members of one's own family, or company, or country carry less moral value than others.

brazzy3• 5 months ago

I think the belief of ordinary people most likely to dispose them to atrocity is that of prioritizing the ingroup.

In my opinion, there is another tendency even more significant in that regard. Namely, the visceral desire to see "bad guys" deservedly suffer. Once people are in that frame of mind, they strongly resist any attempts to understand and maybe prevent whatever the "bad guys" did, let alone questions whether it was actually bad.

This is what fuelled lynch mobs, it's what makes MAGA types cheer when ICE murders immigrants, and it's what makes certain leftist circles chant "eat the rich" along with images of guillotines and wood chippers.

When you point out that poverty causes crime, rightists get mad at you for "excusing" or "justifying" crime, and when you point out that poverty causes support for far-right politicians, leftists get mad at you for "excusing" or "justifying" racism.

Of course, this interacts with your point: when someone from the ingroup does something bad, people are willing to look at their reasons and if found lacking it is only the individual that should be punished, whereas the outgroup is never afforded the luxury of complexity, and the entire group is held responsible for each individual's sins.

kgwxd2• 5 months ago

I have way too many family members and associates like that. "Family First" has the same ominous ring to me too. At least, in the given scenarios. Would you agree it's less ominous, maybe even noble, when shit hits the fan though?

I think they're easily convinced we're living in constant state of war, even on a slow Tuesday at Costco. The propaganda they often parrot would seem to suggest it.

Or maybe they see there are scenarios that is considered noble, and generalize it to be the case for all scenarios. The people I know like that also have a habit of over-generalizing every aspect of life. Cliches, aphorisms, etc. are a huge part of their vocabulary, but they are rarely applied in the original spirit of the sayings.

LudwigNagasena• 5 months ago

The situation in which people exchange favors within their mutually beneficial personal networks seems to be the basic and typical way things function. It’s actually remarkable that we are able to resist this tendency and normalize fair and impartial institutions.

praptak• 5 months ago

CS Lewis has a speech about the ingroups and corruption. His thesis is that the mere desire to be "in" is the greatest driver of immoral behavior:

"To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”"

https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/

rramadass5• 5 months ago

Also Lord Acton - “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”

ChrisMarshallNY• 5 months ago

"Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; But the harm does not interest them."

-T.S. Eliot

bsenftner6• 5 months ago

In undergrad I did a formal Philosophy / Sociology study, where we were looking at human motivations. The research indicated that prestige is the number 1 driver of human motivation. Gaining prestige "trumps" ethics. Nobody likes to hear that.

PaulHoule• 5 months ago

I'd note that it is common for fraudsters to prey on members of ingroups

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud

lo_zamoyski4• 5 months ago

Absolutely. In an ideal setting, elites model excellence and serve as an example for others to follow. In practice, things are never so pure, and in bad cases, quite bad. This is why we may speak of the fish rotting from the head down. The general populace takes its example from what is taken to be its elite, even if in objective terms, that "elite" is a total failure.

You see this with political opinions. People generally don't think very deeply about politics. They generally reflect the political sensibilities of the in-group they aspire to remain part of or aspire to join. It's a signal. A reasonably intelligent person can make the distinction between signal and genuinely informed opinion, but often, and especially among the poseurs, it's not about the truth value of an opinion. It is about the signal. This is the very definition of bullshit: something said with total indifference to its truth value, and only valued for its instrumental usefulness.

graemep• 5 months ago

I think this is absolutely spot on with the Epstein thing. Powerful individuals just helping each other, giving each other information and money, or facilitating or ignoring exploitation because it is "what we all do". Especially effective when the group believe (maybe implicitly) that they are "better" and entitled to put their interests before those of the public. Even more so when there is a huge advantage to be gained by being part of the group.

Join my networking group, pass on some info in return for money or vice-versa, turn a blind eye to abuse even if you are not involved....

rayiner8• 5 months ago

This is a good explanation of the Irish Machine in Chicago, corrupt white governments in the south, and Somalian welfare scams in Minnesota. It also explains the endemic corruption in tribal or clan-oriented societies like Afghanistan.

Conversely, radical universalist regimes—even bad ones like the Taliban—can cut down on corruption. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tackling-corruption.... It’s possible that the low levels of corruption in New England, compared to the rest of the country, is the legacy of the radically universalist Puritans.

getnormality3• 5 months ago

I grew up with a very strong sentimental sense of moral universalism. I loved Beethoven's Ode to Joy and the romantic idea of universal brotherhood.

But as I bank years in the adult world, as a worker and a neighbor, I've been progressively disillusioned. I don't find universalism to be a common viewpoint. I've found it to be very rare that anyone wants to be my "brother" or "sister". And sometimes those that seem to, end up being exploitative, callous, or strictly fair-weather.

I'm not resentful or anything. I have a happy family and a few close-ish friends, and life feels full. But I can understand how the loneliness and coldness of the world makes people more particularist. People may think: "if the world acts like it owes me nothing, then what do I owe the world?"

js8• 5 months ago

But isn't it just a failure to communicate it? What if almost all other people are similarly disillusioned?

Also, according to psychologists, one negative experience outweighs roughly five positive experiences of the same magnitude. So, as we get older, we might have tendency to accumulate negative experiences, and as a result become more cynical and less idealistic. And so it kind of perpetuates.

WarmWash2• 5 months ago

I realized as I got older that the ambient air of socialist/collectivist virtues that filled the all young people spaces wasn't because of some kind of special enlightenment achieved by the contemporary youth (as I deeply believed as a millennial riding high on the rise of the internet), but instead was just an easy ideology for a group of people with little to lose and a lot to gain.

Underneath, people are overwhelmingly just in it for themselves, and judge others by how closely they align with their personal set of "whats best for me" ideals.

nancyminusone• 5 months ago

As an ideal, I have little doubt that most people believe this, it's just that it's something that's very easy to exploit, and you stand to gain a massive amount if you do. Its a real tragedy of the commons scenerio. With millions and billions of people and just one commons, there's plenty of tragedy to go around.

It's still worth it to try - I find it difficult to give up completely. Most people I meet are not evil, and it's not like you're going to make it out alive at the end regardless.

kgwxd2• 5 months ago

No need for the romance. We don't have to be "brothers". That outlook is divisive in nature anyway, and a weapon for abusers: "I thought we were brothers. Now, put aside your hesitations, and help me hurt these 'other' people."

We can just be people. Don't hurt anyone, no one gets a pass to hurt you. Hurt someone, someone gets a pass to hurt you. Just you, not your "brothers". No matter the status of anyone involved.

Severity, intent, and priors must play a factor in the level of returned hurt, but should never end with none, and death should be a last resort, but never completely off the table.

That's the good-faith interpretation of the golden rule. Instead of the popular abuser and enabler (turn the other cheek) interpretations. They both call anyone who dares hold anyone accountable, a hypocrite for supposedly not following the golden rule.

I don't care what story book it's in, or who said it, or when. It's a good rule on it's own merits. Doesn't mean everything that comes form the same source is equally valid.

cassepipe3• 5 months ago

But I can understand how the loneliness and coldness of the world makes people more particularist

I am like that, I stand more on the disillusioned/disappointed side but on the other hand let's not for forget that individuals diverge quite a lot from one another and that for some "Everyone's in it for themselves" has not been a sad conclusion but happy justification for their behavior.

lo_zamoyski4• 5 months ago

Sounds like the farce of modern liberté, égalité, fraternité, as in fraternité ou la mort. Just try not to be my brother!

Moral sentimentalism is a fool's errand, because it isn't morality. It's a superficial emotional ersatz, not something rooted in sound reason and reality. And so "universal brotherhood of Man" was always farcical. It's like those people who "love humanity", but can't be bothered to feed the homeless guy on the corner, or treat his wife decently and with due care. It always has to be something "grand" and "out there". It replaces authentic, concrete local allegiances - all relationships are local - with abstract, impersonal "brotherhood", which ultimately destroys real social cohesion.

Yes, there is a "human family". But family and community are not some undifferentiated, homogeneous mass. Society is ordered and composite. While we can love all as a matter of general disposition and wishing them well, love as such is manifested in the concrete and the active, not mere affect or the abstract. Our priorities and duties of love must concern concrete persons. They radiate outward and diminish with distance (by nature, but obviously there is an obvious impracticality to "loving everyone" in any meaningful and substantive way). Your duties toward your wife are greater than those toward your brother; toward your brother greater than your cousin; toward your neighborhood than the next one over. This priority is not either/or, and they do not preclude aiding more distant siblings in an hour of need. Loving one person more than another does not mean hating the other or some kind of license to disrespect the dignity as that person. It does not give permission for jingoism or chauvinism.

In the hyperindividualistic, consumerist liberal developed world, the trouble is that we've become atomized. We have denied our intrinsically social nature (just as collectivism warps it and denies our individuality). In doing so, the social order has been thrown into chaos. That's the chief reason for our social ills. In our misguided desire for "liberty", we have throw away objective morality and the notion of pre-consensual duties. We live to consume, and even our relationships are reduced to transactional conduits of consumption. Our culture is nihilistic; all it knows is consumption. There is no greater horizon. It cannot understand the social truly and in a healthy way, only according to the language of consumption. And all that obstructs unbridled consumption is taken to be opposed to "liberty" and therefore something that must be destroyed.

It's the revolutionary ethos of destruction.

derbOac5• 5 months ago

I enjoyed this paper, and there's innumerable things that could be said about ingroup-outgroup dynamics and corruption.

In my personal experiences with corruption with organizations, ingroup membership often becomes increasingly narrowly defined, and defined in such a way as to benefit a certain group of individuals at the expense of others. The underlying rationale is a narcissistic entitlement or rationalization for why one person or small group of people is deserving of disproportiate benefits or flexibility at the expense of others. It starts with some kind of distorted egocentric schema about others in a more distal way, and then becomes increasingly strict and more proximal. Narcissistic egocentrism is at the core; it only manifests more weakly at first, and then becomes stronger. The ingroup boundaries never stop shrinking, because there always has to be some justification for why that particular group — which was never really defined by the initial ingroup boundaries, the ingroup was only a proxy for themselves — is more deserving than others.

csfNight167• 5 months ago

Such an insightful article. Had to cover in 3 sittings though - the reading is a bit dense.

jacquesm2• 5 months ago

It's Gwern! He's like a combine harvester for data in all forms, digesting it and putting stuff out there that is usually bullet proof and extremely enlightening. I've yet to see him put out something that didn't meet that standard. Well worth your time, also on other subjects.

cyber_kinetist• 5 months ago

The actual linked PDF is not from Gwern, it's a 2003 paper from two sociologists Blake E. Ashforth and Vikas Anand.

Paracompact5• 5 months ago

Fear is induced by coercion, the threat of negative consequences such as ostracism and demotion. To be sure, blatant coercion facilitates the denial of responsibility and thereby compliance with corrupt directives. Such coercion, however, leaves less room for (perceived) volition, a key precondition for the dissonance reduction process discussed earlier. Newcomers subject to blatant coercion have a sufficient justification for their obedience – to avoid the threat – and thus do not need to realign their attitudes to accommodate the otherwise dissonant behavior. Indeed, blatant coercion may provoke resentment and reactance against the source of coercion and the targeted behavior (e.g. Nail, Van Leeuwen & Powell, 1996). The upshot is a greater likelihood of grudging compliance, whistle-blowing and voluntary turnover (and thus, risk of exposure). Further, coercion may affect behavior only as long as the pressure is applied. For these reasons, blatant coercion tends to be an ineffective means of sustaining corruption.

Astute. When the average person is asked to imagine how corrupt leaders operate, I think they tend to overemphasize the effectiveness of simple violence. To foster a corruption that will last, you have to mold the circumstances so that corruption is the only option that makes sense.

cpa• 5 months ago

Another good read: https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/business-ethics/resou...

rramadass5• 5 months ago

Absolutely on point!

You need only look at the bureaucracies in countries which rank high on the corruption index. Most join to just earn a livelihood but are soon "socialized into corruption".

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption#Causes

Per R. Klitgaard corruption will occur if the corrupt gain is greater than the punitive damages multiplied by the likelihood of being caught and prosecuted.

Since a high degree of monopoly and discretion accompanied by a low degree of transparency does not automatically lead to corruption, a fourth variable of "morality" or "integrity" has been introduced by others. The moral dimension has an intrinsic component and refers to a "mentality problem", and an extrinsic component referring to circumstances like poverty, inadequate remuneration, inappropriate work conditions and inoperable or over-complicated procedures which demoralize people and let them search for "alternative" solutions.

The references section has lots of links for further study of which Robert Klitgaard's Controlling Corruption is a classic with case studies.

One thing i would like to know more of is how Technology either reduces or exacerbates corruption.

luke5441• 5 months ago

Well, I know of one technology whos primary use-case is corruption: Crypto.

rramadass5• 5 months ago

With corruption, one needs to look at the overall system i.e. involving Society/Individual/Economics/Politics/Organizations/Processes/Technologies/etc. rather than narrow silos.

On the whole, i feel technology has been a corruption mitigater since it reduces the human factor (i.e. the motivation/cause) from the process chain. This has been validated in my own personal experience.

On the flip side, when used by people-in-control it concentrates power in the hands of the few and its non-linear disproportionate effects can exacerbate the problem tremendously eg. various Internet based scams.

PS: Are emerging technologies helping win the fight against corruption? A review of the state of evidence - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016762452...

casey2• 5 months ago

Corruption is defined as deviation from universalism. Shouldn't orgs at least pretend to care about productivity or is that the ultimate sin for a universalist? Or is the ultimate sin not pretending that universalism is productive?

justonceokay2• 5 months ago

Young people hate it when friends work together because it means they are at a disadvantage as they are not making friends

ArchieScrivener• 5 months ago

There are some great movies that deal with this: Wall Street, The Firm, The Big Short, Suicide Kings, Michael Clayton, among others.

One can even consider the never ending Ethics classes in college an ironic form of corruption that never teaches anything we don't already know by secondary school, but used to pad credit numbers and tuition revenue.

codechicago277• 5 months ago

My business ethics professor just showed clips from Yes, Minister! and House of Cards in class and showed the tactics. Seemed odd at the time, but I got more out of it than a normal ethics class.

stared• 5 months ago

As a counterexample, here is an example of a Singaporean officer refusing to accept a bribe, as reported by Lee Kuan Yew:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nZv_UkMh0FA

_factor• 5 months ago

The people who crave that money and influence tend to be control freak psycho/sociopaths. They need to feel superior to others because deep down they don’t/can’t value themselves. They don’t even know what they’re competing/fighting for anymore. They just can’t stop because they know no other way.

NoToP• 5 months ago

The 1972 Knapp Commission report is essential reading on the topic

quacked• 5 months ago

I take some issue with these kinds of articles that minimize the impacts of "street crime" in favor of the admittedly much broader and insidious effects of corporate crime.

Corporate crime generally can coexist with a functioning system, even while it drains the prosperity of society, but street crime will just dissolve the society overnight. People physically abandon locations with high street crime.

A corrupt system is still a system, meaning that in theory it operates to produce something of value for society (e.g. in addition to lying about climate change, causing cancer, and blocking renewable energy via lawfare and propaganda, BP provides a colossal amount of fuel for society) but street crime produces nothing and destroys community outright at the local level.

Ensorceled• 5 months ago

But street crime is often a symptom of the "much broader and insidious effects of corporate crime": social systems stripped of resources by politicians to provide grants to baseball stadiums, police patrols in quiet wealthy streets but abandoning poorer quarters, tax incentives to companies that then pay their employees so little they are a burden on the food security systems, mental health care priced out of reach for the poor so they end up homeless and violent.

You can list these connected problems all day.

cassepipe3• 5 months ago

People physically abandon locations with high street crime.

Exactly. Which is why

... street crime will just dissolve the society overnight

is false. Street crime is also generally limited to poor areas and people who can't move out will be the first victims. Street crime does not dissolve trust at the societal level, it just dissolve trust of everyone into a few segments of the population (whose members are also now the first victims of that loss of trust)

Whereas corruption is a cancer that takes hold of all institutions as anyone and you might need to leave your country altogether when it becomes a third world hellhole.

FrustratedMonky• 5 months ago

This is how the US falls. The entire US as organization, with corruption at the very top.

derbOac5• 5 months ago

The rationalization aspect of their model can't be overstated enough in my opinion. It never starts with something clearly unethical; it starts with something more complicated. Something that is uncomfortable and morally suboptimal, but has some justification being appealed to — it benefits the group, it's otherwise unfair for some members to have to bear some small temporary cost for the benefits of others, or something of that sort. The level of the corrupt behavior becomes more and more extreme though, such that justification becomes more and more questionable, until you're left with something more seriously problematic. In the meantime, the people who questioned the slippery slope might have left, and you're left with people who aren't in a position of power for whatever reason (they're junior, or in small numbers) to question what has become clearly unethical cultural norms.

rayiner8• 5 months ago

I think the article is overlooking an important category of corruption where social norms treat certain acts as theoretically immoral but in practice impose little to no social sanction for such acts. In places like India, for example, taking bribes is just standard practice. It carries so little social sanction that it’s like jaywalking here in the US. People acknowledge it’s technically illegal, but it carries so little social sanction that people don’t consciously need to rationalize it. The same thing with cheating in schools, which is normalized in India and has become almost as normalized in the U.S.

WhatsTheBigIdea• 5 months ago

I like this definition of corruption, though there are many...

"The abuse of entrusted power for private gain"

Jaywalking is breaking the law, but it is not corruption.

Civil disobedience is also typically breaking the law, but is not corruption.

It is important to recognize that just because a system is codified in law does not mean that it is not corrupt.

chaostheory• 5 months ago

Corruption is as normal as cancer in organizations. Sometimes it gets excised, and new cells form eventually starting the process again. Other times, it ends up killing the organization.

socalgal22• 5 months ago

I feel like seeing people disregard traffic laws fits this topic in some related way. They could be patient, they might arrive at their destination 1-3 minutes slower (or not), but in the moment they choose to break the law and put others at risk.

1. You see others do it and feel compelled not to be taken advantage of

2. You start with small things as escalate

3. You normalize the behavior in one context and then it expands to other context.

This feels like it's following similar patterns of normalization

Even if it's not direct death, which, with at 4000lb car is certainly a possibility, it can indirectly cause severe repercussions. If you ruin someone's car they might not be able to get to work. They lose value in their car even if repaired. Repairs are never 100%. They also have to deal with all the time dealing with the time dealing with accident itself and time dealing with repairs etc. Time they could have spent earning a living or taking care of loved ones.

Yesterday I was at a 1 lane road where there's enough room on the right to squeeze in for a right turn. A driver squeezed to that right turn area on the red. Then on the green they went through the light and illegally passed all other cars. I see this kind of stuff daily.

Another one I see regularly. There's left turn lane with a left turn arrow. The lane to the right of the left turn lane is NOT a left turn lane, yet random drivers turn left from it. It's more common to see them turn left when there's the green turn signal but I've seen them turn left when the left turn signal is red.

Another that escalated over the years is cutting across multiple lanes of traffic and the painted barrier to take a freeway exit at the last second.

toteroni• 5 months ago

i agree 100% and it occurs more often the closer you drive near a big city where the traffic is already aggravating. that one driver doing something maneuver to save themselves 1-2 minutes while delaying everyone behind them 10 seconds..which adds up across the 10-20 people that just got cut off.

curious what your solution/remedy to this problem is? more police on the streets with pre-filled tickets they can quickly hand out? self policing via dash cams and if you send in a video to the police they can ticket them and get a 30% cut of the ticket the law breaker paid? mass traffic surveillance and get sent a ticket instantly to your address/email when traffic laws are broken? when i travel outside of the US i usually take the country’s public transport instead of driving so don’t really know if this has been solved for successfully

socalgal22• 5 months ago

I actually think of moving back to a place where I wouldn't have to drive in part because I'd no longer have to deal with bad drivers.

I think I lean toward letting people send in video, no % cut. I seems like it would pay for itself and no new equipment needed.

The normalization of corruption in organizations (2003) [pdf]

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