The Effects of Corruption on the Collective Mental State of Organisations

Abstract

Corruption is defined and the magnitude of its consequences for living standards, health and wellbeing is assessed. Once in place, a corrupt organisation can become a self-sustaining system, maintained by the reality that the costs of reform are much higher than the costs of tolerance. However, there are also heavy psychological costs that come with tolerance. After each new incident of manifest corruption within an organisation, a psychological dynamic comes into play, very similar to the well-known stages of grief. An organisation will pass through these stages, or become fixated at one or more of them, until a resolution of the original manifestation of corruption has occurred, for better or worse. The need to identify areas of corruption before undesirable mental states become endemic is thus a major imperative.