ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the principal variables having to do with corruption in governmental organizations in the United States, and explores some significant relationships among them. It should be noted also that the nature of corruption puts special difficulties in the way of getting information on the basis of which to make a rational allocation of resources. The chapter begins by setting forth a conceptual scheme for the description and analysis of corruption in all sorts of organizational settings. This is applied first to the "typical" business and then to the "typical" governmental organization. The chapter concludes the section some dynamic factors. Factor closely related to the second, has been the imposition upon business organizations of constraints much like those under which government operates. Public opinion more or less obliges the business organization to subordinate the profit criterion to other objectives—ones which, as in government, are vague and conflicting.
