Amid all the new information coming forward from the damning audits of the Portland Hotel Society, I got to wondering how these transgressions happen.

It seems like many people almost expect those with access to public coffers to misuse them.

Are we that cynical? Are others that greedy?

Is it that simple?

It can’t be that only people who have lived greed-filled lives came to be involved with the PHS. Why should work in the non-profit sector attract people who are any different in terms of their predisposition to greed than a random selection of people from other sectors of the economy?

Maybe the “bad apple” theory is at play here. Some studies have found that the higher someone’s corporate rank or salary, the more readily they rate greed as a positive trait. Looking out for number one isn’t all that bad; after all, it’s how we adapt and thrive in times of strife.

But there are other theories of corruption, which include organizational culture theories: those that assert that a group culture leads to a particular mental state that leads to corrupt behaviour; theories of clashing moral values, which posit the causes of corruption are reflected in the society as a whole and what it favours with its norms; and public administration ethos theories, which blend societal and organizational pressures and typically channel lack of attention to integrity issues on the public official.

At least eight companies created by the Portland Hotel Society to deal with things from cleaning to pest control owe the society about $500,000.

The audits pointed out that several of the companies are owned or run by people who are also involved with the PHS.

A PHS employee owns DTES Janitorial Services, for which he purchased cleaning supplies on a personal credit card and sold them back to PHS for huge markups.

In 2012, six of the eight companies paid $37,000 more in fees to the PHS than the PHS recorded as revenue.

You see why these activities raise concern and more question marks for auditors and members of the public who take interest in the goings-on of their tax dollars.

Greed is a behaviour that could be explained by people being driven to things that bring them pleasure or satisfaction, which often includes money.

Give people access to money without regular oversight and a long and winding road to consequences (which includes severance packages, the details of which have not been publicly released) and put a couple of degrees of separation between them and that money and watch what happens. Add in the attempt at justification because of the “good work” the PHS does for some of this country’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens, and you have a recipe for opportunistic corruption — without even touching on what’s going on behind the scenes in terms of organizational pressures.

Although the burning question for the provincial government — which is supposed to oversee spending in its contracts with various organizations — is how to set this debacle straight, it is also charged with the task of looking at what influenced this to prevent it from happening again.