Ian Scott

Syndicated police corruption is a form of organization capture whereby police officers acting in concert engage in or facilitate illegal activities for profit. The syndicates collect bribes from licensing, protection money and other forms of extortion, and for non-performance of police duties. Eliminating these syndicates has proved an elusive and frustrating task. Their capacity to use coercive powers, the extent and resilience of their organizational base, the abundance of corruption opportunities, and the secrecy of their operations, all mean that success may be temporary. To break syndicates, essential requirements are that anti-corruption agencies are independent, have full powers of investigation and arrest, and are supported in their work by the government. To prevent the syndicates from re-emerging, attention needs to be paid to the organizational structure and integrity of the police force and to the willingness of the public to report corruption. This analysis is based on studies of police corruption in Hong Kong and elsewhere, on archival materials and court records, and on Hong Kong government and ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) documents.

Anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) serve the important function of protecting society’s moral and legal standards. How does the public perceive their effectiveness? What variables influence these perceptions? To what extent does perceived effectiveness interact with the level of trust in a government institution? Using the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in Hong Kong as a case and based on a disaggregated approach, this study attempts to unpack and understand public perceptions of ACA’s effectiveness in controlling corruption. It argues that the perceived effectiveness of the ICAC has two dimensions: an organizational dimension reflecting public perceptions of its structure, functions, procedures, and the integrity of personnel and an environmental dimension focusing on its ability to deal effectively with the changing social environment. The study also shows that trust may serve as a moderating variable to substitute or complement the impact of these dimensions on perceptions of institutional effectiveness. The data of this study are drawn mainly from a large-scale original survey conducted in Hong Kong in June 2019 and from official documents of the ICAC and the Hong Kong government.

Traditional bureaucracies, defined in Weberian terms, are almost invariably seen as antithetical to innovation. Yet, although the academic literature presents an array of formidable structural barriers to the emergence and implementation of new ideas, innovation does occur in traditional bureaucracies. How can the structural impediments be overcome? What are the processes that enable innovation to take place? Based on a longitudinal study of the Hong Kong government's innovation policies and practices, it is argued that political context is a critical variable explaining how, even in rigid traditional bureaucracies, barriers may be avoided or temporarily suspended. Two contrasting case studies are used to illustrate, first, the importance of political commitment in gaining acceptance for new ideas and, second, the failure of agencies dedicated to innovation to achieve their objectives. It is postulated that circumventing structural barriers or working through political channels to reduce their impact may be a more constructive strategy than creating dedicated agencies to develop innovative measures. The study is grounded in a literature review, documentary evidence from the Hong Kong government's innovative agencies, and interviews with senior staff from those agencies.

In recent years, the Hong Kong government has sought to supplement its highly successful, rule-based anti-corruption strategy with value-based elements which stress the importance of ensuring personal integrity and avoiding conflicts of interest. The introduction of these elements raises issues about the relationship between rules and values within public organizations seeking to enhance their integrity management systems. In the Hong Kong case, it is argued, the predominance of the rule-based system means that value issues, such as potential conflicts of interests, tend to be pushed up through the hierarchy for resolution at higher levels in the organization. In addition, the development of informal rules relating to value issues limits the extent to which public officials can exercise personal discretion. The article is based on a survey of Ethics Officers and Assistant Ethics Officers in the Hong Kong government in June 2010 and on follow-up interviews conducted between October and December 2010.

In this article, we examine the regulatory mechanisms governing post public employment in Britain and Hong Kong in the context of changing views on how integrity should be managed in their civil services. In both places, new public management practices have increased the possibility of 'soft' conflicts of interest which in turn has resulted in debates over the necessary degree of regulation, the organizational form that this should take, and the extent to which ethical concerns should be more focused on the communication and inculcation of core values in civil servants. We argue that the difficulty of regulating 'soft' conflicts of interests is driving moves toward the greater centralisation of ethical regulation in both Britain and Hong Kong and that there appears to be a return to more traditional ways of managing integrity.

Over the past decade in Hong Kong, the relationship and accountability of statutory bodies to core government, to the legislature, and to the broader public have been the subject of continuing and, as yet, unresolved debate. Faced with scandals and other serious problems in a number of the major statutory bodies, and in the context of its own problems of lack of political support and legitimacy, the Tung administration tended to reduce the autonomy of the statutory bodies by increasing central control and integrating their functions with those of core government. Legislators have seen the problems of statutory bodies from a rather different perspective, arguing that they result from a lack of accountability and transparency. The government’s eventual concession to the need for reform has resulted, since 2003, in a review of the principles governing the work of all advisory and statutory bodies and of specific statutory bodies which have experienced serious problems. This article examines the principles contained in the review and assesses whether they are likely to lead to increased autonomy and improvements in governance standards.