Schwartz Personal Focus Values & Corruption Permissiveness of Public Servants-A Theoretical Model

With the recent spate of corruption cases throughout the world, there has been a feeling that the public servants should have values with social focus rather than personal focus. There is hardly any public discourse which does not indicate the importance of selflessness amongst public servants. The need seems to have emerged from a presumption that values with personal focus might nurture the corruption permissiveness of an individual. The existing literature, however, hardly offers any direct evidence either in support or against this presumption. The personal focus values, like any other personal value, have defined goals which speak of the standards one places for oneself. Since such standards can have a selfish or a pro-social/altruistic inclination, the value too could therefore manifest differently for different employee depending upon the inclination of the standards. This paper illustrates how this uncertainty can be resolved and a definitive relationship between personal focus value and corruption permissiveness of public servant can be established. In this process, the paper integrates the research findings on the construct of Public Sector Motivation (PSM), Schwartz personal focus values and corruption decision making. The paper demonstrates that the personal focus values of Schwartz, in interaction with the PSM, effectively explain the corruption permissiveness of a public servant. Implications for theory and practice are discussed in this paper.