Discovering the grey zone between corruption and whistleblowing: histories from the Italian Public Administration

The theme of corruption represents a critical social issue, considering the impact that it has on the economic and social life of countries (Anand et al., 2004; Ashfort and Anand, 2003; Thomas et al., 2004; Trevino and Brown, 2004). This is particularly true when considering the public sector, where the interests involved are much more than those of a restricted private audience, but rather those of multiple stakeholders related to the public interests (Gnan et al., 2013; Knott, 2011; Svara, 2014). Literature has largely debated on how scandals related to public servants’ corruption, opportunistic behaviors, and rent-seeking, increasingly characterized the public administration (Knott, 2011; Knott and Miller, 2006; Mengistu and Vogel, 2006; Shaw, 2013). As a consequence to the tentative of corruption, the literature has always highlighted two possible behaviors: accepting corrupt proposal (thus becoming “corrupted”), or doing the whistleblower (thus denouncing the tentative of corruption) (e.g., Pinto et al., 2008). These two behaviors clearly represent the two opposites of a possible large scale of different behaviors that might represent a “grey zone” between the extremes. Indeed, for different reasons, people might react to a tentative of corruption with nuanced behaviors that could be more or less close to the acceptance of corruption or to the whistleblowing, but that not necessarily are perfectly identifiable as the one or the other. Not all people are equally susceptible to corrupt practices through the pathways of socialization. For instance, newcomers in organizations usually bring an unalloyed perspective to organizations in many organizational matters. Since they are not hardwired to the firm’s routines, it is likely that some might refrain or resist from becoming a part of corrupt activities even in the presence of strong organizational factors (Manz et al., 2005). On these grounds, the aim of this study is to identify behaviors that contribute to define the ‘grey zone’ between accepting corruption and whistleblowing as reactions to corruption proposal. We define the “grey zone” as the area that moves from accepting to denouncing corruption, made of nuances characterizing public servants’ behaviors and reactions to the tentative of corruption. More specifically, the research question driving the present study is: what are possible behaviors and reactions to episodes of corruption different both from corruption and whistleblowing? To reach the aim of the study, we interviewed Italian public servants attending an advanced training course (a University Master) on Public Management issues. In so doing, the study has interesting implications both under the academic and practical point of views, as it provides the description of different histories of corruption that enables detecting the grey zone between corruption and whistleblowing. The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. The next section assesses previous literature on corruption and explains the reasons behind the present study. The third section describes the research design. The fourth section shows the findings emerging from the interviews, while the fifth section provides the discussion. The last section will provide concluding remarks and future research directions.