Exploring Spiritual Factors Influencing Public Servants’ Involvement in Corruption: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Corruption among public servants remains a threat to governance, institutional integrity, and public trust. Despite anti-corruption initiatives, increasing cases and arrests suggest that measures require attention to spiritual factors. This study identifies the spiritual factors influencing public servants’ involvement in corruption and examines how they shape susceptibility to corrupt behavior. A Basic Qualitative Inquiry design was employed. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with ten participants from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Institute of Integrity Malaysia, the Public Service Department, and the Royal Malaysia Police. The data were coded manually and analyzed thematically. Four themes emerged: institutional space and loosened controls, material pressure and moral rationalization, spiritual fragility as a risk facilitator, and the spiritual-integrity bastion as a protective mechanism. The findings show that spirituality functions as an internal control complementing legal, enforcement, and governance mechanisms in preventing public-sector corruption. The study contributes by identifying a dual-register pattern in which public servants express spiritual resilience through religious language, including sin, retribution, and work as worship, and moral-practical language, including blessing, family dignity, and career trajectory. It demonstrates how spiritual mechanisms interact with each element of the Fraud Triangle to enable or inhibit corrupt behavior, extending existing corruption frameworks with an internal moral dimension.