The worst of slaves: Linking collective corruption with stress

...A feature of corruption is that it appears to cause no stress to its perpetrators, even though they are acting against themores of the wider society. One possible explanation is that many people comply with corruption as a mechanism for avoiding stressful conflict within their organisation...

...Sanctioning of corruption is likely to occur when corporate interests dominate three sets of conflicting value systems: that of the self, that of the corporation and that of the public. In situations when an individual’s values, in the context of society as a whole, are likely to be in conflict with the organisational ones, work will be carried out only under orders. These orders may be explicit or implicit, perhaps couched under ‘business necessity’. It can be accepted that in this situation, internal personal conflict could cause stress at an individual level, but it is not known if this would be a group phenomenon.

This form of sanctioning may appear to absolve staff lower down the organisational hierarchy of the responsibility to make personal moral choices, thereby removing a cause of stress. But it also implies a lack of control, which itself can cause stress. However, even with sanctioning, for corruption to take root, compliance is essential.

...Compliance to corruption may happen in unexpected ways. A series of experiments conducted at Yale University showed that normal, ordinary people are capable of inflicting severe pain on other human beings in following orders and doing their duty...

...Of all aspects of institutionalisation of corruption that may be linked with stress, the one that is most disturbing is that of creeping induction: The essence of the process involves causing individuals, under pressure, to take small steps along a continuum that ends with evildoing. Each step is so small as to be essentially continuous with previous ones; after each step, the individual is positioned to take the next one. The individual’s morality follows rather than leads. (Darley, 1992) The implication is that once a new employee becomes a member of a corrupt organisation, there is no going back. They will accept and carry out corrupt orders. The moral conviction and courage needed to go back is so stressful that individuals prefer to comply...

1. Collective corruption can cause individual stress
2. Many become compliant to collective corruption and in order to reduce stress
3. Compliance is associatedwith strong group identification, setting the stage for institutionalisation of corruption
4. High-identifiers may feel stressed when the group is threatened andmay complywith corrupt practices to cope with the stress
5. However, newcomers and others who do not identify strongly with the group may still feel stress in complying with corruption and become whistle blowers

First published in Stress News, the Journal of the International Stress Management Association [UK], Volume 17, Number 4 October 2005.

From: http://www.isma.org.uk/stressnews.htm