Governance and Professional Ethics

Governance and Professional Ethics

• Governance origins: A Greek word signifying a captain's ability to guide a ship through storms, emphasizing values, morals, and safekeeping of passengers.
• Good Governance: Implementing proper management, combating corruption, promoting transparency, accountability, and justice.
• Good governance criteria: Honesty, transparency, accountability, accounting, empowerment, legitimacy, effectiveness, efficiency, the rule of law, and justice. Also responsiveness to demands and consideration of complaints, information systems.
• Organisational Governance criteria: Right to legal complaint, accounting, transparency, ethical conduct, recognition of stakeholders and their concerns.
• Importance of good governance and anti-corruption: Reduction of poverty, sustainable development, and successful social responsibility programs. Corruption results in poverty by diverting funds from public good to private gain.
• Definition of governance: A government's ability to manage public affairs effectively and responsibly, accountable, and open to citizen participation, supporting democracy. Shifting towards less centralized government, reforming the relationship between public and private sectors, and defining roles and authorities for partnership with society.
• Governement and systems: Systems governing relationships between key players impacting performance, comprising strong institutions over time, with clear responsibility definition.

Principles of Good Governance

• Participation: Essential, can occur directly or via legitimate representative institutions. However, representative democracy may not always address the concerns of vulnerable groups. Participation must be informed and organized, including freedom of association and expression, and an organized civil society.

• Rule of Law: Fair legal frameworks implemented impartially, full human rights protections, and fair legal enforcement requiring an independent judiciary and an unbiased police force.

• Transparency: Decision-making and implementation processes transparent, information readily available to affected parties via comprehensible and easily accessible channels.

• Responsiveness: Processes and institutions should be accommodating to all stakeholders.

• Equity and Inclusiveness: Society's well-being relies on all members feeling included and part of the mainstream, especially the vulnerable. Groups need opportunities for improvement or maintaining their interests.

• Effectiveness and Efficiency: Results should align with societal needs via optimal resource utilization. Includes sustainably using natural resources and environmental preservation.

• Accountability: All stakeholders, including government institutions, the private sector, and civil society organizations, should be accountable to the public and those affected by their activities. Accountability requires transparency and rule of law.

• Strategic Vision: Leaders and institutions need long-term visions for sound governance and development.

Dimensions of Good Governance

• Economic dimension (economic governance): Decision-making affecting a country's economic activities and its relations with other economies. Influences justice, poverty, and quality of life.
• Political dimension (political governance): Decision-making processes for policy formulation.
• Administrative dimension (administrative governance): Policy implementation, encompassing political, social, and economic contexts

Corruption

• Definition: Violation of norms and regulations, undermining public interest, or misuse of public office for personal gain. Powerlessness breeds corruption, and absolute power creates absolute corruption.
• Forms: Bribery, nepotism, abuse of authority, illicit enrichment, public funds embezzlement, misappropriation, waste, money laundering, accounting fraud, forgery, currency counterfeiting, and commercial fraud.
• Characteristics: A complex issue intertwined with economic, social, cultural, educational, and political dimensions, it's a global, not local, problem, impacting developed, developing, and underdeveloped; rich and poor nations. A critical and significant problem recognized through international reports from organizations like the World Bank and Transparency International. A timeless issue existing in the past, present, and future.

Causes of Corruption

• Poverty and inadequate income: Inability to meet basic needs.

• Inadequate financial decentralization: Multiple channels for disbursement lead to inadequate oversight and control mechanisms.

• Government intervention in service provision without defined systems and regulations.

• Weak government supervision.

• Monopolized government services and bureaucratic procedures for obtaining certificates, licenses, and completing administrative processes which can encourage bribery behaviors.

• Lack of job security: Temporary or seasonal employment contracts. This leads to decreased staff power, opening potential for misuse of office for personal gain.

• Appointments of unqualified individuals.

• Lack of career advancement: Prolonged service in one position.

• Lack of religious values.

• Deficiencies in upbringing and societal norms.

• Involvement of local and international businesses in moral compromises.

Administrative Corruption

• Definition: Common and widespread in underdeveloped and undemocratic countries, a significant obstacle to development. Thrives in secrecy and ambiguity, often unseen and hidden.

• Forms: Administrative laxity, dishonesty, bribery, abuse of power, inefficiency, gossip.

• Reasons for administrative laxity: weak professional conduct, absence of rigorous accountability measures, lack of bribery penalties, significant administrative discretion among officials, excessive bureaucratic regulations, lack of clarity or incomprehensibility of decision-making, and reliance on secrecy.

• Dishonesty: A breach of trustworthiness, violating Islamic principles of honesty and prohibiting bribery, fraud, and theft. A study found that 75% of employees in major US companies admitted to stealing from their work at least once.

• Bribery: A societal and global problem related to 'trading in public positions' and betraying entrusted roles.

• Inefficiency: Common complaint of managers concerning staff productivity. Low productivity frequently reflects various underlying issues.