Organizational cultures as agents of differential association: explaining the variation in bribery practices in Ukrainian universities

This article explores the variation in bureaucratic bribery practices of ordinary Ukrainians. Despite common arguments about corruption-generating structural constraints of economic transition and about the regional culture of corruption in Eastern Europe, interviews with university-affiliated Ukrainians reveal significant variation in rates and patterns of their engagement in bribery. This article shows that participation in corruption is closely associated with actors' exposure to organizational cultures. It uses Edwin Sutherland's differential association theory of crime to argue that the acquisition of definitions that are either favorable or unfavorable to bribery through exposure to different organizational cultures of universities leads Ukrainians to either commit or avoid bribery. Students and professors acquire crime-related definitions through (1) encounters with institutionalized bribery mechanisms, (2) conversations with peers and colleagues with more substantial experience within specific universities; and (3) observations of other students and instructors. Karl Weick's notion of organizational enactment is argued to be the mechanism whereby these learned definitions translate into specific bribery-related behaviors. Inasmuch as acting against these definitions may lead to academic or professional failure, testing their validity is risky for university members. The processes of organizational enactment of bribery-related definitions are, therefore, at the core of organizations' role as agents of differential association. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the potential synthesis of differential association and organizational theories as a powerful tool for the study of bureaucratic corruption.