The Development of anti-corruption environment in Lithuanian public sector: best practice and experience

ENThe article analyses the preconditions for the establishment of an anti-corruption environment in the public sector organization and demonstrates Lithuania's best practices in this area. Corruption as a multi-structured global phenomenon undermines good governance, public trust in public sector organizations and causes serious damage to the functioning of those organizations. One of the essential aspirations of the Lithuanian Government is to reduce the extent of corruption, increase transparency, fairness and openness in the public sector. This research focuses on the justification the hypothesis, that the public sector organizations must play an active role in the field of combating corruption, creating an unfavourable environmentfor the prevalence of corruption. The purpose of the research is to show the added value for the development of anti-corruption environment in the public sector as one of the effective tools for minimizing the extent of corruption. Research results show that legislation alone is not sufficient to solve corruption problems. Public sector organizations usually do not have effective anti-corruption toolsto prevent and manage variousforms of corruption (bribery, nepotism, conflicts of interest, etc.). By conveying best practice, the author presented a new initiative of Lithuanian public sector organizationsto develop anti-corruption environment aimed at minimizing the likelihood of manifestation of corruption.Logical and comparative analysis, document analysis, problem analysis and systematic approach research methods are used for analysing issues relatedwith boosting the effectiveness of combating corruption in the public sector. The author posits and concludes, that the development of an anti-corruption environment should become a strategic priority of the public sector organization, which requiresthe establishment of an effective managementsystem for corruption prevention and the commitment shown by top management to ensure its functioning in a realistic rather than formal manner. [From the publication]