Integrity & Civil Servants – Nepal & Bangladesh

Civil service reform and anti-corruption: Does ethics training reduce corruption in the civil service?

Project Summary

What is the impact of ethics training on corruption in the civil service? This project builds on the insights of the  ‘Civil Service Reform and Anti-Corruption Project’ (funded under Phase 1 of the ACE programme), which sought to identify which civil service management practices are effective in reducing corruption in the civil service. To shed light on this question, the project conducted civil service surveys in ten countries in four developing regions. With 23.000 participants, it produced the largest cross-country survey of bureaucrats in developing countries ever conducted. Among other findings, the survey showed that one common management practice—ethics training—does not correlate with lower corruption or more ethical behaviour of civil servants.

In response, several governments asked for guidance on how to design effective ethics trainings for civil servants. The current project will provide evidence of the effects of such trainings, surveying corruption and (un)ethical behaviour of 1,200 civil servants in Nepal and Bangladesh over time while providing state-of-the-art ethics training. The effectiveness of the training will be examined in a field experiment to provide rigorous evidence on how to design ethics trainings that work.

Policy and Programming Implications

The research will provide insights for those who seek innovative tools to reduce corruption in the public sector and promote ethical behaviour among civil servants. The findings will directly inform the efforts of government partners in Nepal and Bangladesh to develop and continuously implement ethics trainings that promote ethical behaviour of civil servants. The insights will help civil society and international organisations to monitor and evaluate the implementation of anti-corruption policy in the two countries, as well develop anti-corruption strategies more broadly.

Research Questions

• What is the impact of ethics training on corruption in the civil service?
• What types of effects do ethics trainings have on the attitudes of civil servants toward corruption, the (un)ethical behaviour of civil servants, and the wider capacity of organisations to provide public goods?
• To what extent do the effects of ethics trainings last over time?
• Can ethics trainings promote ethical leadership practices that have wider effects on reducing corruption in the civil service?

Methodology

The project principally relies on a randomised field experiment and a panel study of participants to examine whether the state-of-the-art ethics trainings can reduce corruption in the civil service. The field experiment can provide guidance on whether ethics training has positive causal—rather than merely correlational—effects, and thus provide robust evidence on whether ethics training does, in fact, work to reduce corruption. For the field experiment, a randomly assigned treatment group of civil servants will be trained in the first period; a ‘wait-listed’ control group of civil servants will be trained in the second period.

The field experiment and panel survey will be complemented by semi-structured interviews to inform the design of the ethics training courses, particularly to adapt the training to the local context. Interviews will further be conducted after completion of the training to generate supplementary qualitative evidence for its effectiveness.     

ACE Impact

Findings

First, a survey of civil servants in ten countries across four developing regions, with more than 23,000 participants, revealed that public servants in the Global South often lack awareness of ethical problems in their work context, knowledge of relevant ethics and integrity rules and regulations, and have limited experience with training in public service ethics.

Second, the initial finding was taken up by governments in Nepal and Bangladesh, leading to the design and implementation of ethics training programmes that focus on the development of ethical leadership skills and practices. In Nepal, the ethical leadership training was implemented in collaboration with the tax administration. It involved the training of tax officials in 40 inland revenue offices across the country. In Bangladesh, the ethical leadership and policy integrity training was developed in collaboration with Bangladesh Police and implemented with police officers in one police district.

Third, the experience with ethical leadership training has been positive in both contexts. Initial findings indicated an improvement of ethical competences among public servants, the application of ethical leadership practices, and greater confidence both in applying ethics and integrity regulations and in confronting ethically challenging situations in the work context. The evaluation of the training also identified a decrease in unethical behaviour by officers trained in the Bangladesh project.

The findings are relevant well beyond the cases of Nepal and Bangladesh. They suggest that ethics training is a potentially effective tool to curb corruption in public service directly, and as an instrument to complement the wider menu of anti-corruption policies.

Impact

• The development of the survey instrument to measure issues related to corruption, ethics, integrity and, more broadly, human resources management in public administration, has been scaled up and implemented in more than 20 countries since the completion of the first project. The survey results have been compiled in reports for international organisations, governments, and institutions within multiple countries. They have influenced civil service reforms in countries such as Chile, Kosovo, Croatia, and Nepal.
• The survey research has led to the foundation of the Global Survey of Public Servants (GSPS) as a joint initiative of the World Bank, Stanford University, UCL, and Nottingham University. The GSPS showcases survey data from more than 30 countries, as well as the conceptual underpinnings of surveys in government and methodological guidance for users in government and academia.
• The global survey initiatives have been taken up by other international organisations such as the Inter-American Development Bank to assess integrity and competences in statistics offices in 14 Latin American countries, the European Commission to support a pan-European survey of public servants and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management (OECD/SIGMA) unit to measure public administration reform progress in EU accession countries.
• The ethics training programmes in Nepal and Bangladesh have had important local impacts. In Nepal, the NGO Pro Public has founded a Centre for Public Service Ethics that seeks to support ethics and integrity initiatives in public administration. In Bangladesh, the police force has supported efforts to expand the ethics training to additional police districts.

Research Team Members

• Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, University of Nottingham
• Christian Schuster, University College London
• Kim Sass Mikkelsen, Roskilde University
• Shree Krishna Shrestha, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu
• Taiabur Rahman, University of Dhaka
• Kazi Maruful Islam, University of Dhaka