An Examination of the Relationship Between Perceived Injustice, Workplace Neutralization and Corrupt Tendencies: A Study on Employees in Nigeria

Employee-perspective to studying corruption has argued that corruption among employees can be traced to perceived injustice in the distribution of work-related benefits. Previous studies did not provide sufficient empirical evidence on the extent to which interplay of perceived injustice and neutralization may be connected with corrupt tendencies, which may be an important step to understanding the psychological process of corruption. In two studies, using a field experiment (study 1, n = 328) and a questionnaire study (study 2, n = 306), results showed that workplace neutralization increased the extent to which perception of organizational injustice led to corrupt tendencies. Implications of the results for theory, research, and practice are discussed.