Planning Corruption or Corrupting Planning?

Emmanuel Frimpong Boamah, Vanessa Watson, Clifford Amoako, Wes Grooms, Davina Osei, Victor Osei Kwadwo, Andy Bonaventure Nyamekye, Kahad Adamu and Gabriel K. Appiah

Journal of the American Planning Association, 2022, vol. 88, issue 3, 377-391

Abstract: Problem, research strategy, and findingsHere we illuminate the often overlooked, yet pernicious impacts of corruption in planning. We used a sequential mixed-methods approach, inclusive of a survey of 82 planning practitioners in Ghana and semistructured interviews with 17 of these survey respondents, to investigate planners’ experiences of corruption. We found that incentives for corrupt behaviors, structured by the particularities of planning culture, are necessary but insufficient to unpack corruption in planning, both in and outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Personal values and coercion also play roles in incentivizing corruption. We also learned that practitioners rely on social coping mechanisms to resist corruption, which speaks broadly to practitioners monitoring themselves when institutional corruption controls seem weak or nonexistent within a planning culture. Further research across planning cultures is called for to develop planning curricula and practices that can help students and professional planners understand and resolve corruption and other moral dilemmas specific to their planning contexts.Takeaway for practicePractitioners, educators, and students must better understand corruption and how it complicates planning. This understanding requires examining how workplace norms and cultures (re)produce coercion among practitioners, especially among gender, ethnic/racial, and other minority practitioners. Planning schools, professional associations, and workplaces must respond to these corruption realities by purveying context-sensitive anticorruption competencies to students and practitioners.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01944363.2021.1987969 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjpaxx:v:88:y:2022:i:3:p:377-391

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjpa20

DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2021.1987969

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the American Planning Association is currently edited by Sandi Rosenbloom

More articles in Journal of the American Planning Association from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().