Research Paper Example on Accountants: Fighting Corruption at Home and Abroad

1. Introduction

Corruption is the misuse of public office for private gain; corruption is said to distort standards of merit, erode the respect of law, result in higher public investment, and lower infrastructure quality (Everett et al., 2007). Corruption holds back political and economic advances to promote the illegal export of resources, encourage conspicuous consumption, and generate distrust. Therefore, accountants must be at the forefront of the fight against domestic and international corruption; the auditor and audit work are significant elements in reducing fraud and corruption.

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1.1. Research Background

All through the global community, endeavors to moderate and forestall fraud and corruption are started through formalized review and control practices and standards. Dipietro (2014), as of late detailed that investors view such oversight as a method for disposing of corruption, securing the business practicality of a venture, and making value and improving execution inside the organization. The hopeful investigation introduced by Dye (2007) and Seldayo and De Haan (2011) underscores the potential for overcoming corruption’s effects through rehabilitation, resolution, and mitigation of corrupt influences. This procedure is time-dependent and ongoing. The current study seeks to assess whether corruption can be mitigated through increasingly intentional procedures, concentrating on auditing and control tactics and their relative pertinence to administrative plan setting and framework changes inside the Saudi Arabian government.

Ongoing reports show that corruption in Saudi government elements stays pervasive regardless of current efforts to annihilate and influence the impact of the rentier value system and an industrious inheritance of advantage and unethical strategic policies (Robertson et al. 2012). For instance, Al Maeena (2014) refers to a few cases, the most open of which was an ongoing disclosure concerning the manufacture of bogus measurements identifying with Saudisation work proportions at state-funded schools. In particular, more than 2,000 Saudi teachers who were paid monthly were found to work for the educational system as well as receiving public funds for the falsification of their status while the schools collected excess royalties from the Human Resources Development Fund for each teacher (Al Malena, 2014).

1.2. Research Problem

During the 1970s, British Representative Willie Morris related that the oil fortune in Saudi Arabia had ‘prompted a corruption of character,’ whereby government operators kept up a ‘corrupt interest in all contracts’, bringing about a framework which ‘is, best an infernal nuisance and potentially explosive’ (Leigh and Evans, 2011). Regardless of many years of history, improvement, and administration, an ongoing report by the Al-Hayat paper demonstrated that more than 500 instances of corruption had been recorded in Saudi Arabia somewhere in the range of 2012 and 2013, with over 92% of Saudi nationals indicating the nepotism was the immediate reason for residential corruption (Press TV, 2014). Further and Khatib (2011), and Sullivan (2013) reported that despite expanding oil incomes and Saudi riches, poverty affecting between 2 and 4 million Saudi residents has negatively affected public welfare. Following government reforms and publicized efforts to defeat corruption and anti-competitive activities, especially since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, statistical indicators suggest that corruption stays predominant and active. With no particular arrangement distinguished for this problem, there is a requirement for progressively robust and targeted auditing and control techniques. The current study looks to fundamentally assess means and instruments that could be utilized to repress the impacts of corruption, concentrating on a differentiated range of reviewing and control strategies executed all through the more extensive global community.

1.3. Aim of the research

Earlier examination showed a proceeded and expanding level of corruption predominance and its effect on monetary, political, and social segments in Saudi Arabia. There is a need to emphasize an essential and framework based appraisal of potential change measures inside the Saudi Arabian public sector. Thus, this research aims to assess the conditions and benefactors influencing corruption and misrepresentation in Saudi Middle Eastern open venture. The study further identifies those factors preventing more rigid control measures and assesses the viability of formalized audit and control standards for mitigating future incidences of corruption.

1.4. Objectives

In light of this essential examination point, the following core research objectives will be cultivated through:

1. To survey and recognize the most widely identified attributes of extortion and corruption in the Saudi Arabia public sector.
2. Evaluate late changes and government controls, featuring the qualities and lacks current norms for alleviating and preventing corruption.
3. To overview and analyze public officials’ opinions regarding the opportunities for diminishing extortion and the hindrances that may forestall formalization of such measures.
4. To propose an elective mediation plot intended to upset corrupt practices and reframe government straightforwardness as per universal review and control norms.

2. Literature Review

Analysts in economic and political regions have archived their examination and evaluation of corruption’s ideological and sociological foundations in their numerous writing sources. Fundamental to their assessment are a few popular topics and contributory plans that influence public leadership and administration in Saudi Arabia. Underlining the underlying foundations of maslaha (public interest) or the ulama’s obligation to ‘take measures to keep up the government assistance of the general population’ (Al-Atawneh, 2009). Problematically, threats or perceived threats to state power and open public welfare qualifies the Imam for ‘make any strides important to satisfy his obligation’ (Al-Atawneh, 2009). While a move towards worldwide discretion and vital politicking is putting pressures upon this dictator setting, a pioneer, such as Abdalwahhab, challenges that may modernize Saudi Arabia, secularization must be grasped a result which negates Islamic goals and philosophy (Kapiszewski, 2006).

Albeit Saudi Arabia is ordinarily recognized as a ‘religious Unitarian state,’ Al-Atawneh (2009) challenges there is a division in the ‘administering authority of the state’ between the ulama (authorities) and the umara’ (rulers) who are required to execute the standards and precepts of shari’a law. The resultant duality sets up common interests and shared impact as religion-social qualities and standards impact policymaking, the rule of law, and administration (Al-Atawneh, 2009). For the improvement of the general straightforwardness in Saudi administration, Kapiszewski (2006) recommends that an increasingly powerful system of audits, controls, and data sharing is required; a procedure wherein Salshomrani and Qamar (2012) propose will be realized through a promise to e-government and online administrations. Through a deliberate evaluation of the reformative online program’s qualities and weaknesses, the researchers recommend that a citizen-centered, user-driven paradigm is needed for future iterations, amending the current standard of government-driven agenda setting (Salshomrani and Qamar, 2012). Comparable research directed by Shim and Eom (2008) exhibits that e-government can ‘control degenerate practices by upgrading the viability of inside and administrative control.’ Further, e-support ‘checks corruption by improving government transparency and accountability.’

In public administration, corruption is a typical and hindering event that shows from weaknesses and loopholes in legal frameworks, bringing about ‘adverse impacts on economic development’ (Sedadyo and De Haan, 2011). Proof introduced in a South Korean contextual analysis by Lee (2006) affirms that significant corruption levels neutralize comprehensive domestic development. As nations create, correcting their strategies towards a progressively robust international standard, Sedadyo and De Haan (2011) exhibit a decrease in corruption occasions and rates. This change in outlook is upheld by strategy, legal controls, and formalized norms.

In the Everett et al. (2007) research, ‘abuse of open office for private increase’ is referenced to have various outcomes, including lost government income, the subverting of proper administration, additional expenses to organizations that take part in corruption, and lost opportunities for those that do not. Corruption is said to twist norms of legitimacy, disintegrate the regard of law, bring about higher public investment, lower infrastructure quality, and keep down political and financial development.

Researchers and different partners have been on the front line to propose a few different ways to alleviate the bad habit of corruption to a reasonable level. For public administrators, Francis et al. (2003) show that international accounting standards can altogether diminish corruption and improve economic stability, market fairness, and developmental opportunities. Recent research directed by Han et al. (2012) shows a positive connection between auditor participation and independence in public sector administration and corruption moderation. Moreover, Tabish and Jha (2012) appear in a sector-based analysis of moderation measures that corruption can be killed from open venture through interests in against corruption techniques, including ‘rules and guidelines’ and ‘dread of discipline.’

As indicated by Neu, Everett, and Rahaman (2013), another wave of corruption contemplates has concentrated on the smaller scale subtleties suggesting accounting, auditing, and accountability practices upgrade corruption. While robust inner controls and refined enemy of corruption components may dissuade corruption, their quality does not generally mean the nonattendance of corruption (Neu et al., 2013). Corruption and sound bookkeeping controls can and do exist together. For instance, in the Canadian Sponsorship Outrage, government cash was improperly used to impact a submission’s result, which compromised the organization’s separation. Explicit accounting practices were enrolled to conceal demonstrations of corruption. Neu, Everett, and Rahaman (2013) provided extra proof of the disappointment of interior review practices in revealing corruption cases. Likewise, Everett et al. (2015) utilized the case of government obtainment to give regulating course on how bookkeeping can effectively be occupied with the battle against corruption.

Law has will, in general, approach request as its accomplice to advance a purportedly broad ‘hostile to illegality. The common area of the modern ‘illegality of property,’ where the ‘law and order’ outcome is generally ‘more policing’ and ‘more law,’ has increasingly become endemic in the so-called advanced democracies and republics (Hoskin, 2015). At last, there is another collection of designed works on in regards to the arrangement of the review report, its interpretation into other rundown reports, and the flow of these investigation follows (Neu et al., 2015).

All through the writing in this field, there are a variety of essential holes that have emerged as an immediate consequence of the ongoing, reformative arrangement publically regulated in Saudi Arabia. Roberston et al. (2012) challenge that even though the administration keeps on holding a careful distance command over guidelines and administration in th...