Does Training Public Employees in Ethics Enhance Integrity in Government?

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.

To learn more about this project, contact Principal Investigator [email protected].

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Law and Social Science, Law and Social Science, Nottingham, United Kingdom