Integrity climate questionnaire

Abstract Studies concerning integrity and fraud are always assumed to have a correlation with each other. The notions of having higher levels of ethicalness and integrity are expected to reduce fraud, corruption or misappropriations in an organisation. The purpose of this study was to observe integrity climate relationship towards integrity violations. The study seeks to validate integrity climate questionnaire which has been validated from known experts. The integrity climate measures integrity climate through elements of honesty, conscientiousness and principle. The initial phase was establishing relevant constructs of which are key points of the integrity of which is then whether these influences integrity violations. The items are then filtered through known experts related to this field. The next phase was to establish the content validity of the instrument design which will be used to measure integrity climates at an organisational level. There are 16 questionnaire items which have shown that it is relevant towards integrity climate. The samples are 80 Malaysian government officers who are employed in an enforcement agency. The results show that conscientiousness to have a strong relationship which is significant towards integrity violations. Honesty and principles have correlations and are still relevant towards the construct of integrity climate.


Introduction
Integrity and ethics have always been a similar trait towards good and best qualities amongst individuals and organisations. Integrity is the state of honesty and having strong principals and ABOUT THE AUTHORS Afzal Izzaz Zahari is currently conducting research in financial criminology which includes studies relating to the field of internal control, integrity and organisational behaviours.
Jamaliah Said is the deputy director of Accounting Research Institute Universiti Teknologi MARA. Her research interest includes strategic management, governance accountability, and integrity.
Roshayani Arshad is a professor at Universiti Teknologi MARA. Her current areas of research include governance risk management, reporting and corporate social responsibilities. The research group are mainly focused on the subject area involving integrity. These topics include research on human and organisational behaviours.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Integrity involves having high levels of ethical awareness and moral understanding of daily activities. The discussions ethics are now more focused on the focus of integrity. Studies are now calling out for more research in this area as more people are continuously involved in unethical behaviours. This study focus is towards the climate and organisational behaviours as these are the areas related to improved efficiency and higher levels of capabilities for the organisation. The public and private sectors are vulnerable to integrity violations as these unethical actions of integrity violations prevent organisations from achieving their full potential. The values of ethical behaviours are crucial in order for us to have an improved understanding of controlling these acts of integrity violations. morality doing the right things and whereas ethics is the moral principle that governs the individual's behaviour. The organisational climate of integrity is having levels of morality and ethical behaviour depending on the organisations set behaviour and goals, this can be influenced by leadership or environments through the control systems that are in place. The notion of having good levels of integrity is towards making decisions that are the right thing regardless of the process and procedures. The use of having higher levels control over the organisations through internal control or good leadership styles can improve the levels of ethics and integrity (Aziz, Rahman, Alam, & Said, 2015;Bauman, 2013;KPMG, 1999;Moorman, Darnold, & Priesemuth, 2013). Organisational integrity can be influenced by institutionalisation, the establishment of the environment as the correct actions of the norm in the organisation (Goodstein, 2015).
The development of research concerning fields of integrity had shown that numerous and different interpretations of integrity have been made. Such common reference is literature was by Becker that had explained that the philosophy of Objectivism as the pillars of integrity (Becker, 1998). This means that the relevance and perception of integrity are dependent on their desired objectives. Further explanation is that integrity is the generally accepted truth and reality of moral and values of the group or community (Parry & Proctor-Thomson, 2012). When a person does something ethical, their actions do not necessarily mean that the action is good or correct or has integrity (Trevinyo-Rodríguez & Leigh, 2007). Their work interprets that the social construct is what makes people or organisations behave with integrity. Early pioneers of government fraud studies in the '90s had also stressed that fraud as a significant problem in the state and local governments (Ziegenfuss, 1996). Researches in these areas are mostly considered prohibited or restricted as most countries do not want their local government to be associated with frauds or integrity violations.
The issue of integrity violations occurs everywhere of which it is just depending on their levels of violations. This includes Malaysia which amongst has the largest proportion of government workforce in the world of which the serving finance minister had stated in 2017 that it was at 1.6 million workers including the armed forces, police, education and health personnel's (Kannan, 2017). A large number of workforce enables such as ethical and integrity violations to probably occur in such a construct. The public sector issues globally are often faced by issues of having low levels of integrity. There are around 40 officers of the Customs Department of Malaysia which had been dismissed to being involved with corruption, bribes and graft (Ong Boong, 2017). The Immigration Department of Malaysia had also taken action towards 37 public servants who abused of power with the case of systems sabotage of the Immigration Department in the year 2016 (BERNAMA, 2016). These are some of the issues in Malaysia that shows us that having appropriate levels of integrity is important in order to deter and discourage these misbehaviours.
There are observations that organisations should maintain a climate of openness, honesty and trust in order for the members of the organisation have the strength the air out their concerns such as through whistle-blowing (Morris, McKay, & Oates, 2009). Whistle-blowing practices are not new in Malaysia, it can, however, be further improved by allowing such actions to report wrongdoings of their organisation. When the organisation climate has ethical values such as openness and honesty, this can help reduce the risk of fraud (Kummer, Singh, & Best, 2015). These policies are well accepted in Malaysian society and are already a form of fraud deterring mechanisms (Omar & Bakar, 2012;Othman, Aris, Mardziyah, Zainan, & Amin, 2015).
The purpose of this research is to establish and validate the constructs of integrity climate. The values, observations, and conditions of integrity climate had been confirmed through the interviews of high-level experts in related fields of integrity.

Theoretical background
There normative ethical theory states that the standards or rule of moral norms are the principles the people are expected to go by (Gibson, Donnelly, Ivancevich, & Konopaske, 2014). There are three main types of normative theories that are discussed in literature which are deontology, teleology, and consequentialism are some of the ethical theories that are usually discussed. Utilitarian theories and Kantian ethics can be taken into perspective when observing ethical culture behaviours in organisations (Beauchamp, Bowie, & Arnold, 2004). Kantian ethics is the belief of certain actions that are prohibited based on a set of requirements, for example, if the act of fraud is proposed and people around are acceptable of that behaviour, then the fraud will occur. The opposite applies when the people around are opposed to that behaviour. Ethical culture observations fall under normative ethical behaviour as most people in the organisations are expected to behave to the social norms (Key, 1999;Lu & Lin, 2014;Silvija & Ksenija, 2012). The observations of behaviours had explained that organisational behaviours can be explained to the ethical culture exerted in the organisation of which it will influence the employee's attitude and behaviours (Treviño, Butterfield, & McCabe, 1998).
This reflects the current study as it attempts to examine normative elements of integrity climate. The study of integrity climate criteria's will be based on honesty, consistency and principle. These are the three common areas identified that are commonly discussed in areas involving integrity.

Significance of the study
The study is in line with the National Integrity Plan (NIP) of Malaysia where the governments want to enhance Malaysia's level of integrity by the year 2020 (Badawi, 2004). There is a need to progress towards social, cultural, intellectual and spiritual with the help of enhancing ethics and integrity which will become part of the society's culture.
Toor and Ofori had mentioned that future research can examine the relationships of organisation culture and climate in order to have a better understanding of organisational behaviours (Toor & Ofori, 2009). This, in turn, will help organisations establish a framework for expressing the culture which will have a direct impact towards ethical behaviours.
Prior studies discuss ethical culture relationship with leadership, attitude, and judgements (Douglas, Davidson, & Schwartz, 2001;Kolthoff, Erakovich, & Lasthuizen, 2010;Treviño et al., 1998). This research focuses on terms of the relationship of how ethical culture can impact an organisational climate.

Literature review
The initial focus of the study is analysing the preconditions that are involved towards integrity climate. The constructs and items of integrity climate are based on past read literature which had commonly mentioned these components which are honesty, conscientiousness and principle (Bauman, 2013;Parry & Proctor-Thomson, 2012).

Organisational climate
Organisational climate research is the understanding of the relationship amongst shared cognitions of the work environment and organisational outcomes (Stetzer, Morgeson, & Anderson, 1997). There are specified climate classification amongst individual, perceptual attribute (psychological attribute) and organizational (situational attribute) (James & Jones, 1977). The situational attribute of organisational climate is a description of climate is the description of the total organisation. They had also suggested research on organisational climate could focus on the cross-sectional design of research and explore the construct validity of organisational climate studied. These three perspectives of climate classification shows that organisational climate includes the interaction of the organisation and members of the organisation (Bamel, Budhwar, & Bamel, 2007) Campbell had described four dimensions of empirical climate studies in organisations which are individual, degree of structure imposed on the situation reward orientation, and consideration warmth and support (Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler, & Weick, 1970). Further dimensions were added to those four which was an orientation towards development and progressiveness (Dunnette & Hough, 1991). Organisational climate is a general perception or shared perception of members of the organisation towards specific climates such as work climate, division climate, or ethical climates. Moran and Fredericks had stated that climate research as a prominent area in organisational science as the observations and exerts significant influence on organisational performance. There are a number of approaches in terms of studying organisational climate which is the structural, perceptual, interactive and cultural approach. The approach that will be used in the research is the perceptual approach of which it incorporates the understanding of the individual's interpretation of the situation of the organisation.

Ethical climate
The study of business professionals observed ethical climate towards deviant behaviours using the ethical climate questionnaire (Peterson, 2002). The findings are that some of the dimensions of ethical climate influence deviant behaviour and when organisations have low levels of ethical climate, they are more susceptible to the acts of deviance. There has been also been investigations concerning ethical leadership and employee misconduct of where the ethical climate is placed as the mediating variable (Mayer, Kuenzi, & Greenbaum, 2010). Their findings were that when leaders have ethical values, it will have a positive effect on integrity. The strength of their research was that it was a cross-sectional study from a supervisor and employees point of view. Studies that relate ethical leadership values together with ethical climate had shown that managers can influence perceptions of ethical climate through their leadership practices (Demirtas & Akdogan, 2015) Susan Key had discussed ethical culture comparisons and differences with ethical climate (Key, 1999) stating that ethical climate is the perceived observations by the members of the organisation and whereas ethical culture assessments show how members of the organisations are likely to respond towards ethical uncertainty. There are studies that had shown that strong bonds between the two variables however they are independent of each other (Kangas, Muotka, Huhtala, Mäkikangas, & Feldt, 2015;Kaptein, 2008Kaptein, , 2009Kaptein, , 2011. The study of business professionals had observed ethical climate towards deviant behaviours using the ethical climate questionnaire (Peterson, 2002). Studies on ethical climate such as the testing the environment in the organisation had indicated that ethical culture is an influencing force in shaping the behaviour of the organisation (Treviño et al., 1998)

Integrity climate
The National Integrity Plan was first launched in April 2004 by then Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi with hopes of increasing public integrity in terms of service and delivery (Badawi, 2004). The Malaysian Institute of Integrity is the arm of the government in upholding public integrity with the aims of coordinating the National Integrity Plan (Malaysian Institute of Integrity, 2017). The NIP has five areas of focus which are individual, leadership, system and procedure, culture, and institution. The objective of NIP is to establish a moral and ethical society which has strong religious and spiritual values together with high ethics (Salleh, 2007).
Integrity is defined as being honest and upright of which organisational characteristics are based on noble values such as trustworthy, transparent and accountability (Salleh, 2007). The integrity of an organisation is the code of ethics which is upheld until it becomes second nature of which it will become the common culture for the whole organisation (Badawi, 2004). The integrity plan focuses on family, community, civil environment, socio-culture institute, religious institute, economic, political, and the last main focus is the administrative institutions of the country (Malaysian Institute of Integrity, 2006).

Honesty
Honesty is the core structure of integrity, which encapsulates honesty as one of its prime components of definition (Bauman, 2013;Martin et al., 2013). Prior studies on integrity included integrity tests of which analysis was done towards integrity test in evaluating their validities (Berry, Sackett, & Wiemann, 2007;Ones, Viswesvaran, & Schmidt, 1993). Honest is in the context of being truthful, honourable, incorruptible, open, transparent and sincere (Martin et al., 2013). Following Becker's literature on honesty and integrity in organisations (Becker, 1998)

Conscientiousness
Conscientious is defined as performing good behaviours with their assigned tasks or being vigilant towards their tasks (Becker, 1998;Sackett & Wanek, 1996). Based on the Big Five theories of personalities, conscientiousness is the reflection of dependability which is reflected in the five areas (Becker, 1998)

Principle
Victor and Cullen's had conducted research on validating ethical climate (Cullen, Victor, & Bronson, 1993). The structure and dimensions of their research are based on three locusts of analysis which are individual, local, and cosmopolitan. Their study three elements was based on egoism, benevolence and principle. This leads us towards integrity climate of which the first two elements are honesty and conscientiousness of which the third element is based on their work which is a principle. This is also in terms of how people act towards the general public in order to become somebody who has a moral principle (Trevinyo-Rodríguez & Leigh, 2007). These authors had observed that moral integrity is dependent on the shared observed moral principle which is universal in the community. This is why the third element of principle is important towards integrity climate.

Integrity violations
Integrity violations are actions which involve fraud and corruption which causes financial losses to the organisation (Huberts, Kaptein, & Lasthuizen, 2007). The ACFE report to the nations on occupational fraud had cited that when management climate exerts honest and high levels of integrity, the organisation will report lower levels of occupational fraud (Wilson et al., 2014). There are also observations that organisations should maintain a climate of openness, honesty and trust in order for the members of the organisation have the strength the air out their concerns such as through whistle-blowing (Morris et al., 2009). When the organisation climate has ethical values such as openness and honesty, this can help reduce the risk of fraud (Kummer et al., 2015).
The research integrates the integrity violations developed by Huberts in the nineties as the core components of the research. Their current work observes integrity violations in western countries (de Graaf, Huberts, & Strüwer, 2017).

Research model
The items of integrity climate are based on the following criteria's which are honesty, conscientiousness and principle. These three areas reflect meaning (Bauman, 2013;Pulay, 2014), foundation (Becker, 1998) and moral norms (Cullen et al., 1993;Gibson et al., 2014;Solomon, 1992). These three components will be used in the integrity climate questionnaire which will be further explained in the following section.

Meaning Honesty
Foundation Conscientiousness Integrity climate Moral norms Principle The interrelationships of these elements are built into Figure 1. The definitions and meaning are represented by honesty. The foundation is by conscientiousness and the moral norms are through the principle. Through this contrast, the following research model is developed.
The interrelationship of the research hypotheses is shown in Figure 2. This is then integrated into the research framework which suggests the constructs of integrity climate.

Research development
The three main components are assumed to influence the levels of integrity violations in people or organisations. Honesty and conscientiousness are able to influence integrity in organisations (Becker, 1998;Sackett & Wanek, 1996). Through having an honest practice in the organisation, integrity is assumed to improve together as it is supposed to complement each other (Trevinyo-Rodríguez & Leigh, 2007). This is also observed when the leaders have high levels of honesty towards their workers, the organisations level of integrity will be positively influenced (Parry & Proctor-Thomson, 2012) RH1: Honesty will positively influence integrity climate and reduce integrity violations Conscientiousness is interpreted as the conscience, conformity, dependability, and will to achieve for work (Becker, 1998). Literature had often associated conscientiousness as part of the integrity of which it is a common concept (Parry & Proctor-Thomson, 2012). Studies had also associated integrity correlating substantially with conscientiousness . The assumptions here are that

RH2: Conscientiousness will positively influence integrity climate and reduce integrity violations
Through having a clear set of rules and regulations in the society will help to fight corruption and boost integrity (OECD, 2017). Research studies had shown that having regulations, laws and principles will reduce fraud in the local governments (Brewington, 2013). Regulations had also enabled fraud to be reduced in certain areas of industry (Mohamed, 2013). The regulation also helps better mitigation of fraud.
RH3: Principles will positively influence integrity climate and reduce integrity violations

Survey development
The three main components of integrity climate follow the context of meaning, foundation and moral norms. These are all based on the organisational level of perspective based on ethical climate research by prior researchers (Cullen et al., 1993). The components each of their bases are towards honesty, conscientiousness, and principle are used throughout the study. The measurements are also based on each prior research analysis and the concept is then integrated towards developing integrity climate. The scope was limited towards these areas in order to have a more specific discussion with the interviewees in order to not veer too much from the original objectives (Qu & Dumay, 2011). This approach was also similar to prior studies which first validated the items of their questionnaires with respondents before taking the feedback from their respondents (Thrush et al., 2007). Through the items, the measurements will be further explained in the following section.

Research approach
The experts are then supplied with the copy of the questionnaire which contains the 16 items of integrity climate of which they verified and commented on the items. The items are then used in a survey of which the targeted respondents are employed in the organisations. Respondents are expected to communicate in English thus the questionnaire was not translated for this process.

Integrity climate
Integrity climate measurement will be based on the three identified components which are honesty, conscientiousness and principle. The following Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3 are the summary of the measurements utilised throughout the research.
Integrity violations are based on the literature by Huberts and his colleagues in terms of their findings and classification of integrity violations (de Graaf et al., 2017). These actions are not limited to petty or small violations but heavy violations that include fraud and corruption  The following items of the above-discussed areas will be handed over to the identified experts of areas of integrity in order for them to provide feedback and improvements towards the mentioned items. The items are then adjusted to suit local perspective and ease of use as advised by the integrity experts. The overall items of integrity climate are then paired together with integrity violations of which are then handed out to the respondents. 4.5.2. Sample and settings 4.5.2.1. Sample. The research utilised a purposive sampling study design in order to sample specific government employees of an organisation. The survey was sent out online through a local government agency. The agency assisted towards distributing the questionnaires amongst its staff and the organisation's identity is withheld in order to protect the anonymity of the organisation. There were 100 questionnaire links sent to the employees, 80 had answered the survey (N = 100, n = 80, response rate = 80%). The minimum-required sample size required is 80 for this size of population (Bartlett, Kotrlik, & Higgins, 2001). The participants were assured that their responses would be confidential and would not identify them individually. Table 4 is the demographic profile summary of the respondents of the survey. The average age of the participants is between 31 and 40 years old (N = 39) which is nearly half of the overall survey. The majority of the respondents have an education and most of them had hold position of more than 5 years in a particular organisation. SPM or "Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia" is the national certificate of examination in Malaysia for a person finishing high school. Grade 23 to grade 40 are non-executive staff, whereas grade 41 to grade 54 are executive staff and can be up to senior managers. JUSA C and above are at the levels of general managers or directors of the organisation, these JUSA conformations are graded from A to C of where A is the highest possible position in the government. Overall, the majority of the respondents have been working in the organisation for more than five years.

Measure validation
The data was analysed using SPSS 24.00 software of which the data were tested for their normality. The reliability of the questionnaire is satisfactory, with a Cronbach alpha of 0.933. The alpha values of 0.7 and above are sufficient for reliability (Pallant, 2007). Table 5 containts the measurement items and scale assessment used within the research.
The KMO results from Table 6 indicated a good dimension indicating that the factor analysis was practical. The Bartlett's test of sphericity shows that there is a statistical significance of the data (p < 0.001).
The correlations of each of the integrity climate instrument indicated that it is within an acceptable range of less than 0.9.
The item of principle which is organisation treatment of breach of rules is almost similar to treatment towards unethical conducts standing at a value of 0.918. Other items indicated high levels of correlation which is acceptable. The lowest value is between correlation is between a sense of duties and justifying their actions of stealing is within their own reasonings at 0.303. Table 7 shows the correlation matrix through factor analysis on each of items of integrity climate.

Multiple regression analysis
The adjusted R square has a value (R 2 = 0.173) of which almost 17% of the total variability in integrity violations is explained by honesty, conscientiousness and principle. The ANOVA results

Description of scale item
Standardised factor loading Offering of bribes (money or favours) to do or neglect something while on duty is common in the organisation .931 Accepting bribes (money or favours) for delivering better service is common in the organisation .933 Using organizational resources for personal benefit is common in my organisation .812 Doing personal work during office hour is common in the organisation .854 Using the Internet, e-mail, or telephone for personal purposes is common in my organisation .861 Taking home office resources is common in my organisation (Office equipment such as a pen or computer) .789 Taking advance from office petty cash (without approval) is common in my organisation

.884
There is over claim of overtime or travelling expenses (Tolls or mileage claims as for example) .839 Zahari et al., Cogent Psychology (2019), 6: 1626541 https://doi.org/10. 1080/23311908.2019.1626541 show that the model is statistically significant (p < 0.01) of which means that some of the independent variables can predict the dependent variable. The unstandardized coefficient of conscientiousness (B = −0.524) suggests that for every one unit increase will decrease the integrity violations by half. Meaning that for every unit of conscience a person has, their intentions to do unethical deviations is reduced by half. Table 8 shows the summary of coefficients of honesty, conscientiousness and principle towards integrity violations.

Honesty will reduce integrity violations
The coefficient table shows that there is a negative coefficient value (B = −0.0310) together with a p-value which is statistically not significant. The first hypothesis is rejected, the value of honesty is not a strong predictor for integrity violations. Some might argue here as there has been a number of prior studies that have observed the qualities of honesty together with integrity (Becker, 1998;Sackett & Wanek, 1996). These studies adopted of using the items of honesty to measure a person's integrity.

Conscientiousness will reduce integrity violations
Conscientiousness shows that it is significant (p < 0.05) towards integrity. The level of conscientiousness is able to deter unethical behaviours and violations in an organisation. This is an important order to further increase the levels of integrity for the organisation. Through identifying conscientiousness as an integral part of integrity climate, overall observation towards the dimensions of their personal values, behaviour control, sense of duty and responsibility plays a major role towards the integrity climate of the organisation. For example, the sense of responsibility here is that people in the organisation know their role in maintaining the levels of integrity. Prior studies had observed that conscientiousness as a factor which promotes organisational excellence (Petrick & Quinn, 2001). This is because this component is required to maintain the high levels of integrity for an organisation.

Principles will reduce integrity violation
Principle has shown that it has a correlation with integrity violation. Although the p-value is not significant, there are correlations between the items of principle which includes the rules and professional code that they abide. Establishing proper rules and regulation helps prevent further violation made by any employees. The issue is when there is a breach towards the rules and regulation which results in an integrity violation action. Such examples include non-compliance towards internal control which will result in abuse of power or corrupt practices in an organisation (Adetiloye, Olokoyo, & Taiwo, 2016;Omar & Bakar, 2012;Siregar & Tenoyo, 2015). These studies relate that when such rules such as control do not adhere, the organisation will generally suffer a loss that can be monetary or reputation. The important factor here is that compliance with the principle helps deter actions of integrity violations.

Summary
The study can be replicated towards a larger population. The sample in this study is just from one organisation, of which findings and support can be further enhanced for existing literature and research. The findings of the study acknowledge the role of the environment of having ethical values which promotes the integrity climate. Previous studies had observed that through having proper control and high levels of accountability will promote integrity and deter integrity violations (Kolthoff, Huberts, & van Den Heuvel, 2007).  The study identified conscientiousness as an integral part of integrity climate, of which the rules, regulation, code of conduct, and professional ethics of the person will be able to influence the integrity surroundings. Although there can be other areas such as leadership or ethical culture would serve as a variable for future reference and research.
The weakness here is that the organisation used in this study is a government enforcement agency. Such dimensions of honesty and principle are maybe presumed to be preconditioned in every personnel. Although it is an enforcement agency, the organisation is not able to escape some of the integrity violations stigmas. These orders of the highest five integrity violations include using office hours for personal errands, laziness, people dating co-workers, favours for family and friends and people missing after clocking in at work. The moral violation is hard to control if there are people in the organisation who continuously violate integrity. This is why having proper integrity climate or environment is important towards the organisation health.
A noteworthy mention here is that the overall integrity climate questionnaire when summed does have a significant negative relationship towards integrity violations. The surrounding environment does have an impact towards the people in the organisation.

Limitations
The study was limited towards public sector employees. The acts of integrity violations could be influenced by other factors that can be further analysed and identified such as economic and political policies. The motivations, pressure and characteristics of the organisations differ from each other, the study had only provided a generalised perception based on the results.
This study only provides an overview of how such behaviours of being honest and conscientiousness can be implemented to influence organisational behaviours. Organisations that face problems with such issues should emphasise on these values in order to deter the acts of corruption. Private sector employees may provide alternative viewpoints towards the study if researched further. There are limitations in terms of comparisons of the subject data of federal and state departments to other countries federal and state departments.

Future studies
The source of the study can also be expanded to other areas of data collection. This, for example, includes the common approach of some studies of using subject data of perpetrators who acted on acts of integrity violations (Cressey, 1973;Free, 2015). The use of data from government organisations itself on acts of integrity violations from related departments (though this part of data collection may be challenging for some researchers).