The Moderating Role of Workplace Autonomy on Corruption Control Strategies: Evidence From 33 South Korean Ministries

Abstract

Corruption research highlights the importance of organizational and individual correlates, such as corruption control strategies or public employee attitudes. In this study, we integrate these research streams by examining whether the effectiveness of two common organizational approaches to controlling corruption—value-oriented strategies, which emphasize ethical decision-making, and compliance-oriented strategies, which rely on monitoring, audits, and punishment—depends on perceptions of workplace autonomy. To explore this, we use novel administrative data on corruption, along with codes of ethics and survey data from 1235 career public servants across 33 South Korean ministries. Findings suggest greater perceived autonomy is associated with greater corruption tolerance in organizational contexts where compliance-oriented corruption control strategies are prevalent. Conversely, greater perceived autonomy is associated with lesser corruption tolerance when value-oriented corruption control strategies are prevalent. These findings contribute to administrative corruption research by illustrating how individual perceptions of their workplace shape the efficacy of organizational corruption control strategies.