FIFA Corruption Controversy

Football is one of the most popular sports in the entire world. Nearly every country has some sort of involvement whether being fans or participating in huge events. FIFA is the widely known organization involved with professional football. This report will be used as a tool to provide the HR staffing with advice on how to prevent corruption in leadership.

Recently in the news FIFA has been under fire for the actions that have been taken by a large number of executives. In this report a news article from BBC on September 25 of 2015 was observed (“Fifa Corruption Crisis”, 2015). The issues with the corruption in FIFA will be looked at in a Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior aspect. Fourteen of the recent top executives were

Soon, allegations of vote-buying surfaced. Former Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness said “a bid nowadays can only be successful if payments are additionally made under the table” (Daley, 2011).

On 27 May 2015, multiple FIFA officials were arrested on accusations of bribery and laundering. FIFA also launched an internal investigation on the biddings for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup (“2015 FIFA corruption case”, n.d.). Nine FIFA officials were indicted and FIFA was left with loss of face (U.S. Justice, 2015).

As can be concluded from the recent media attention, the accusations of corruption are a vital threat for FIFA. The organization has heard various boycotting claims already, indicating that many people are unhappy. It is therefore of tremendous importance the FIFA takes steps to prevent and root out corruption. The consequences could mean the end of the organization as we know it today unless major changes are made. Proving that FIFA cares enough to build people’s trust once again may be the best way to regain

The definition they give for bribery is the following: “bribery is the bestowing of a benefit in order to unduly influence an action or decision” (2006, p.10). To prevent corruption, it is important to know who is prone to be corrupt. Husted (1999) showed that a culture that is prone to corruption is often highly risk averse, masculine, and has a large power distance, as defined in the work of Hofstede (1984).

On the other hand, it is argued that some individuals are more predisposed to commit crimes than other individuals in the same position. Therefore, according to Hirschi and Gottfredson (1987), the behavior can be attributed to personality traits. Personality measures can be used by HR staffing to detect corruption in this case, as they “tend to categorize individuals by what they are like” (Akkermans, 2014, p.748). To counteract the low validity often paired to personality tests, it is recommendable to obtain information from people other than the job applicant and threaten to run cross-checks between self-rating and other people (Akkermans, 2014,