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(Re) Creating '€˜super leaders'€™ to fight corruption in Indonesia

The Bung Hatta Anti-Corruption Award (BHACA) 2015 went to the former mayor of Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini, and the current regent of Batang, Yoyok Riyo Sudibyo

Hendi Yogi Prabowo (The Jakarta Post)
Yogyakarta
Tue, December 1, 2015

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(Re) Creating '€˜super leaders'€™ to fight corruption in Indonesia

T

he Bung Hatta Anti-Corruption Award (BHACA) 2015 went to the former mayor of Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini, and the current regent of Batang, Yoyok Riyo Sudibyo. Both were regarded by the selection committee as demonstrating high commitment to stamping out corruption in their regions.

In the case of Risma, since before her tenure as the mayor of Surabaya she has been known to always stand against any corrupt acts and misconduct in her city government.

When she was working for the Development Program Unit in the Surabaya city government, she initiated the electronic procurement (e-procurement) system to promote transparent and corruption-free procurement tenders.

Similarly, despite his lack of experience as a public servant, Regent Yoyok managed to implement multiple innovations, in particular for maintaining transparency and accountability in his government.

He also chose to adopt the e-procurement system to promote fairness and to prevent corruption in goods and services procurement.

Risma and Yoyok are excellent examples of how even individuals can make a big difference in the struggle against corruption.

However, despite their current celebrity status in the world of anticorruption in Indonesia, their journeys were anything but easy. Pressure and threats from peers, superiors and external parties are among the challenges faced by those who dare to stand up against corruption.

For example, in a talk show on national TV the day before she was presented the award, Risma revealed the ordeal she went through when she received multiple threats from unknown people, possibly because of her courage in reforming the bureaucratic processes of the Surabaya city government.

Due to her dedication to her duties as Surabaya mayor, Risma was recently named third-best mayor in the world by the World City Mayors Foundation.

As the so-called Tone at the Top, leaders play a crucial role in shaping an organization'€™s culture. In other words, whether an organization will become corrupt largely depends on its leaders.

Many anticorruption experts identify leadership as a determining factor for pressure toward, opportunity for and rationalization of corruption (the fraud triangle) to emerge within an organization.

They believe that the role of leadership in corruption is an evolution of the process of a transformation away from caution, honesty, respect and valuing others to the thrill and excitement of selfishness, narcissism and omnipotent graft.

Just as with any other human being, every leader uses his or her individual schema to make multiple decisions in their lines of duty.

Their individual schema also serve as a reference for their subordinates'€™ own schemata.

In the case of corrupt leaders, they will attempt (by coercion if necessary) to capture their subordinates'€™ allegiances and shape their schemata to mimic their own.

As evidenced by the rampaging corruption in Indonesia, it appears that different governments can breed different kinds of corruption because of their different (bad) leadership styles.

When Soeharto was in power, for example, international observers were baffled by the fact that, unlike in many other corrupt countries, economic growth went hand in hand with rampant corruption in Indonesia. In the post-Soeharto era, following decentralization policies, different kinds of corruption schemes emerged.

In short, corruption after the fall of Soeharto became more decentralized and fragmented, which suggested the '€œdark side'€ of the decentralization system.

Many foreign observers view businesses in Indonesia these days as organized along the lines of being full of players such as agents, distributors and other intermediaries in the economy that cause costly red tape and thus inefficiency, in particular because of the implementation of the decentralized system.

To sustain their corrupt activities, corrupt local leaders will shape their networks to be able to continuously regenerate over time by means of normalization, in which they will institutionalize (making corruption part of the organizational schema), rationalize (formulating multiple justifications for corrupt acts) and socialize (making corruption part of individual schemata) the corruption in their organizations.

Any region led by a corrupt and dominant leader will most likely have a corruption normalization structure in place.

The bad news is, so far as studies and practices are concerned, such a structure is very difficult to tear down once it is formed.

In the case of Yoyok, for example, his predecessor went to prison for corruption in the form of regional budget misuse.

This suggests that that when he first came into office he had to deal with the existing normalization structure that his predecessor left behind.

The true achievements of both Yoyok and Risma are their tireless efforts to topple these pillars, for example by establishing the e-procurement system and by reprimanding and sanctioning subordinates for misconduct.

To some degree both leaders have been denormalizing corruption in their regions by implementing various structural and behavioral changes. This is what sets them apart from many other leaders who are less willing to go against the current as they may value harmonization in their personal and professional relationships above everything else, including maintaining accountability and integrity.

Changing the behavior of people, in particular their attitudes toward corruption and misconduct, may put someone in an uncomfortable position as he or she will have to endure pressure from peers, superiors and external parties, just to name a few.

Referring to Risma'€™s experience, for example, being an outcast in one'€™s own community is a price to pay when one is committed to consistently promoting integrity and accountability among people who have been accustomed to seeing or even taking part in corrupt or unethical acts.

A leader with a strong sense of morality often has to act like a '€œsuper leader'€ by (seemingly) single-handedly dealing with multiple structural and behavioral issues within his or her organization and community.

With their current celebrity status, both Risma and Yoyok are considered by many the new faces of the anticorruption movements in regional governments. However, one question remains: How do we create more leaders like them?

A leader with a corruption-resistant schema is a product of a lifelong process of moral development through social and family interactions. On the other hand, a corruption-tolerant leader is also a product of a similar process, but with a different result.

If we could truly understand what constitutes the process to produce a morally sound leader then we may be able to replicate it to make more of them to lead the country.

When a country is dominated by leaders who see corruption as an illogical course of action then corruption will have no place to grow and flourish.
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The writer is the director of the Center for Forensic Accounting Studies at the School of Accounting of the Islamic University of Indonesia in Yogyakarta. He obtained his Masters and PhD in forensic accounting from the University of Wollongong, Australia.

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