Reference no: EM133086978

Bribery has been and continues to be a hot topic in Kenya. The Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission (EACC)[1] claims that there is extensive and rampant bribery even though scant evidence exists of bribery. The dearth of evidence is attributed to the fact that both the giver and receiver of bribes are guilty of an offence under the Kenyan law and hence no one would readily consent to having given or received a bribe. One of the major areas where this vice is practiced is in the Kenyan public procurement process.

You have been recently hired as a researcher by the EACC and your first task is to do a paper on "Bribery in the Public Procurement Process." Your senior has allowed you six months to do this paper.

You start by doing extensive literature review and come across the Institutional Theory that explains why corruption is practiced despite the presence of tough laws and consequences that may be legislated. The extract from the theory is as follows:

Institutional theory - also known as institutionalism - uses country and government institutional characteristics, such as pre-existing rule of law, well-defined anti-corruption norms, and independent anti-corruption institutions with enforcement powers, to explain corruption in the public sector. Institutional theory "examines the processes and mechanisms by which structures, schemas, rules, and routines become established as authoritative guidelines for social behaviour" (Scott, 2004). In relation to understanding corruption, institutional theory brings in the social context and provides a taxonomy for understanding how corruption might become entrenched in organizations, in institutions and in society, despite the existence of an anti-corruption framework (Luo, 2005). Institutional theory considers that corruption is influenced by the character, design and transparency of the political system and its institutions. At the same time, it acknowledges that the relationship between corruption, institutions, political systems, culture and gender is highly complex (Debski and others, 2018; Stensöta, Wängnerud and Svensson, 2015)[2].

You also decide to explore various sources of data to inform your paper and four options are available:

Option 1: Review publicly available documents including online newspaper articles, blogs and posts made in the social media on the topic.

Option 2: Review documents filed with the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA)[3] by complainants, cases reported to the police and court judgments relating to the topic.

Option 3: A survey that would determine how Kenyans perceive Bribery in the Public Procurement Process.

Option 4: Review papers presented in conferences and others appearing in peer reviewed journals.

You know that data or evidence to use in research need to be verifiable, reliable, objective, and sufficient to make good conclusions.

Required:

-Using the postulates of the Institutionalism theory (discussed above), design four research questions that would guide you in preparing the paper

-Critically evaluate the appropriateness of each of the four sources of evidence for your paper bearing in mind the gist of the paper and the research questions that you have developed.

-How would you rank the four sources of data in your attempt to reach proper conclusions for your paper? Why?

-Other than the factors listed above, describe eight practical considerations that would inform your decision to use a data set or any evidence in research