The effect of lean culture on the reduction of academic corruption by the mediating role of positive organizational politics in higher education

Familiarity with the strategies of Academic Corruption (AC) strengthens meritocracy values, increases participation, and education quality calls for the proper use of policies and cultural values ​​by the higher education system. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of lean culture (LC) on reducing AC with the mediation of positive organizational politics (POP). Statistical population of this research included faculty members of University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran. The method of this study was correlational, and it was conducted on faculty members of University of Sistan and Baluchestan with a sample of 185 people based on stratified random sampling method. The research tools included three questionnaires of lean culture questionnaire adapted from Maciąg model (Maciąg, 2019b), positive organizational policy questionnaire adapted from Kacmar and Carlson (1997); Nye and Witt (1993), & Sen et al. (2018) models and the researcher-made questionnaire of reduction of academic corruption adapted from Tierney and Sabharwal (2017) model. According to the findings, confirmatory validity, composite reliability, and Cranbach's alpha were reported to be appropriate in all the three tools. The analysis method was using Partial Least Squares (SmartPLS). The results showed that LC directly and indirectly was effective in reducing AC through POP. Moreover, LC had a direct effect on POP and POP had a direct effect on AC reduction. It could be stated that lean values besides positive organizational policy could play a constructive role in reducing AC; and reducing AC is somehow connected to cultural and political factors of higher education.