Integrity Plan as a Facet of Organisational Integrity in Slovenia
Purpose:
In its anti-corruption act of 2010, the Republic of Slovenia adopted a legal provision imposing an obligation on all public organizations and public sector institutions (integrity plan registrars) to elaborate and adopt their integrity plans (integrity plan implementation in the Republic of Slovenia). Originally, the act stipulated that integrity plan registrars were to adopt their integrity plans by June 5th, 2011; however, following the entry into force of the act’s amendments, the deadline was extended to June 5th, 2012. Nevertheless, some registrars still failed to adopt their integrity plans on time. To determine the causes for such failure, preliminary qualitative research was done, followed by a main quantitative one.
Design/Methods/Approach:
Using the systematic sampling method on the target population consisting of all integrity plan registrars, the data were collected via an online poll on the 658-registrar probability sample, with the response rate amounting to 50.3 percent. The list of registrars was obtained from the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption. Based on the data collected, the validity of the measuring instrument was tested and factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, and t-test were done to check the hypotheses and answer both research questions. Although the basic idea underlying the integrity plan measuring instrument design stems, from the existing literature, we had to design and develop this instrument from scratch. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 23 and IBM SPSS AMOS version 21, the structural equation model software.
Findings:
The qualitative study carried out in 2013 showed not only that there were differences in integrity plan registrars’ approaches to integrity plan implementation in terms of lesser/higher support by their leadership, but also that not all integrity plan registrars elaborated or adopted their integrity plans within said legally stipulated deadline, which is why this segment of the quantitative part of the research was repeated in 2018. The findings showed that organizational integrity proved to have had no statistically significant impact on the causes for untimely adoption of integrity plans, on the one hand, but that, among the demographic data, they were age, length of service and the organizational level factors that had, on the other.
Originality/Value:
This study displays the importance of integrity of organizations and public sector institutions and, in the light of the two research questions and the hypotheses, to that of the integrity plans. The originality of this contribution lies in the fact that in terms of qualitative and quantitative research it is the first one to have provided results and findings concerning the impact of the organizational activity on (un)timely adoption of integrity plans and their implementation in Slovenia.
UDC: 174-057.91(497.4)
Keywords: integrity, organizational integrity, integrity plan, public sector, Slovenia