New Insights into Power and Corruption

Power

For more than a century, power has been looked at through Lord Acton's prism that
'power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. This most
influential pronouncement, with which I have serious disagreement, has done
incalculable damage to society because it, in a way, justifies corrupt behaviour of
those wielding power. The powerful feel, as if, obligated to be corrupt, also those
lacking power have come to expect the powerful to act in a corrupt manner.
Corruption is an extremely lowly and dishonourable act and any attempt to recognise
it as an inevitability tied to the apron strings of power can only be dangerous.

I hold that POWER IS ONLY A VALUE-NEUTRAL MULTIPLIER. It only multiplies

and magnifies the wielder's strengths and frailties, and highlights the positive as well
as negative aspects of their mental makeup and character. Power, being only a
multiplier, can not make an inherently and intrinsically honest person, without a
seed of corruption deep inside, corrupt. In this scheme of things, the powerful will
not be able to deny responsibility for their corruption by pinning it on power and the
others will feel empowered enough to demand that the powerful be held accountable
for their corrupt acts and pay for them.

Corruption

The United Nations, World Bank, and the global coalition against corruption,
Transparency International, define corruption as 'use of public office for private
gain'. Fully agreeing with this definition, I have tried to look for the cause of
corruption and reached the conclusion that WHEN GREED MEETS
OPPORTUNITY, CORRUPTION TAKES PLACE. This can be reduced to a neat
mathematical equation C = G X O, or C is G times O, where C is corruption, G greed,
and O opportunity. Following from this is the painful truth that so long as a
greedy person will have opportunity, corruption will be a fact of life.

Even if corruption is quite ubiquitous, organisations, big and small, must find ways
to overcome it, if they have to last long and truly serve the society. In the following, it
will be seen how this could be done.

By the very nature of their responsibilities, the few persons at the top of any
organisation, profit or non-profit, have immense opportunity. So, even if they have a
small amount of greed that will combine with huge opportunity to result into a
significant level of corruption. Therefore, for zero corruption among the top persons,
greed has to be zero, and there can be no compromise with this requirement. These
zero-greed top people should promote a no-tolerance-for-corruption culture in the
organisation, select near-zero-greed direct reports, and act as an exemplar to them to
further reduce their levels of greed. Quick and heavy punishment to those found
indulging in corruption would act as a deterrent and further reduce the general level
of greed across the organisation. The top leadership should also install required
systems and procedures and use right technology in order to place effective curbs on
opportunity for corruption available to their direct reports. They will, thus, have
small G(reed) and small O(pportunity), resulting into small C(orruption). And
coming down the various management tiers like this, the entire organisation will
have minimum corruption.

Kanan V. Jaswal
Noida, INDIA October 28, 2014