Tackling corruption in urban infrastructure procurement: Dynamic evaluation of the critical constructs and the anti-corruption measures

This study examines two fundamental concerns of corruption in urban infrastructure procurement process. First, it examines the impacts of corruption on the individual stages of the procurement process. Second, it develops a dynamic framework for modeling how the impacts of corruption can be mitigated and how anti-corruption measures can be enhanced. An expert survey was conducted with sixty-two infrastructure-related experts who were sampled using purposive and snowball sampling approaches to achieve these objectives. The study adopted Social Network Analysis and System Dynamics as the main analytical techniques. The results reveal that the most impacted stages of the procurement process are the contract and post-contract stages. The findings also show that the most critical negative constructs comprise psychosocial-specific causes, compliance irregularities, and socio-political barriers, and the most critical form is bribery. However, the System Dynamics model predicts a significant decrease in the accumulated impact of corruption with a slight reduction in the critical negative constructs. The models developed in this study provide useful information that contributes to the development of effective mechanisms to tackle corruption and enhance the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures in urban infrastructure planning and development. This study is arguably the first to develop a dynamic assessment and predictive tool for investigating the collective impact of corruption and anti-corruption measures in urban infrastructure procurement.