Corruption occurs when ambitious and monetarily orientated policy makers feel no moral or legal constraints, which would deter them from pursuing selfish goals.

The average white-collar offender is male, between 31 and 50 years of age and is socially inconspicuous. Contrary to other criminals, these offenders usually lead well-adjusted lives. They are well, or even exceptionally well, educated, possess important positions in their companies or in administrative authorities and are extremely dedicated to their jobs. They have no criminal records, are debt-free and married. Their ideals are in keeping with those of most other people. When holding supervisory positions, they appear to be meticulous and honest.

White-collar offenders usually feel no sense of wrongdoing and do not see themselves as criminals, but rather regard their supplemental income as justified by the amount of work they do. The mechanisms of self-protection and repression are manifold: their workload is not equal to their salary; acts of corruption do not appear to create victims; damage to companies remains abstract. The potential burgeoning sense of guilt is reduced to a neutralizing fixed terminology, such as donations, subsidies or friendly turns.

These intelligent people should know that prosecution could destroy their occupational and private existences. The empirical analysis of criminal law shows though, that neither the knowledge of existing punishment nor the degree of penalty is effective as a preventive measure. Rather it is only the subjectively sensed risk of being detected that can act as a deterrent.

The typical corruption career can be divided into four phases:

1. The initiation phase, also called “making palatable” phase, in which one party discovers, which offers are receptive to the other party – and what can be demanded in return.

2. In the consolidation phase tactics, which have been successful in the past, are tried time and again, with the rewards also increasing. When the immediate social environment shows tolerance towards corruption and regards it as normal, the threat of potential prosecution becomes even easier to repress.

3. In the risk phase the offenders begin to feel safer and safer the longer everything goes well. They are even proud of their own “cleverness” and believe they may overstep boundaries as long as all goes well. This arrogance leads to boasting and very often lifestyles change conspicuously. Efforts made to conceal their deeds are reduced; subordinated colleagues – who pose no threat because of their own anxiety about their own jobs – become involved, being used, for instance, to keep proper accounts of faked invoices.

4. In the revelation phase the lacking sense for wrongdoing becomes obvious. The feeling of having done nothing wrong continues, even as far as the courtroom.

Corruption prospers at every hierarchical level, from senior managers to team managers in purchasing, wherever internal control mechanisms have failed and dubious practices are not severely sanctioned but silently tolerated by company culture. Sooner or later middle or lower management will adopt everything that is allowed at the executive level. The common existence of a double moral standard is a problem, an example of which would be the rewarding of sales management results regardless of the methods used to achieve such profits.

Only cultural changes within companies and societies can lead to changes in the attitudes of policy makers. Honest behavior must be rewarded instead of being punished, and must have a positive influence on incomes and career paths.

In order to evaluate to what extend (potential) employees tend to marring behaviour for companies (e.g., corruption), various procedures psychological testing procedures can be applied. On the next page two of these procedures are briefly explained: the Psychological Integrity Test (PIT) and the Inventory of Occupational Attitudes and Self-Evaluation (IBES).