The effects of national integrity policy, e-government and legal framework on the perception of corruption practices in Malaysia: The perspective of legal practitioners

Corruption is a menace which has created unfavourable business environment in one country thus erodes the confidence to do business and to invest. In Malaysian context, it is claimed that the widespread of corruption practices is caused by the inadequacy in the system. This study examines the effects of the implementation of Malaysian National Integrity Policy (NIP), e-Government and legal framework on the corruption practices from the perspectives of legal practitioners. A total of 378 usable data were obtained from the legal practitioners practising in Penang, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Johor. The data were analysed using SPSS 22.0 and multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypothesis relationships. The findings reveal that the legal practitioners perceived corruption practices in Malaysia as prevalent and the Government needs to be sincere, transparent and more proactive in executing the NIP, e-Government and legal framework. The results also show that the NIP, e-government and legal framework need to be more comprehensive in order to ensure that corruption can be stamped out. In general, the legal practitioners who participated in this study are generally skeptics and unsure of the Government’s initiatives to fight corruption but believe that a more comprehensive and transparent efforts to fight corruptions via the NIP, legal framework and e-Government could have positive impact in curbing corruption practices. Hence, the Government’s initiatives could be further improved, amended and improvised to ensure that corruption practices can be curbed. Although it is acknowledged that there are no anti-corruption measures that could fight corruption in totality, it is hoped that the more comprehensive, transparent and well-implemented NIP, e-Government and legal framework could reduce the likelihood of corrupt behaviours in Malaysia. Future research should fill in the gap by investigating other relevant factors such as religion, and goverment enforcement to fight corruption