Answer: Humans are susceptible to outside social pressures, for social situations have the power to change our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. Conformity, compliance and obedience are the three such important social influence processes. If a person agrees to an act of commission or omission against his perception/value judgement, there may arise the following cases:

• If he does it because most of the people belonging to his social group are doing so, the social influence is called Conformity. Thus, conformity is the change in a person’s behaviour to go along with the group, even if he or she does not agree with the group.
• If someone asked the person to do something and he felt no harm in doing it, then social influence is called Compliance. Compliance is, therefore, going along with a request or demand, even if you do not agree with the request. Here, a probability of refusal exists.
• When a person in authority asked the person to do something, the social influence is called Obedience. Obedience is therefore a change of an individual’s behaviour to comply with a demand by an authority figure. Here to carry the instruction or order is a duty.

Many times, civil servants are found to conform to the social norms of their offices, despite considering them as undesirable, because they do not want to be perceived as ‘different’ or do not want the ‘displeasure’ of the group. They also conform to the norm because they believe that the majority in the civil services must be right and they would not be able to bring changes single- handedly. This social influence leads to the existence of elitist tendencies, red tapism in bureaucracy and corruption in public offices. Sometimes, civil servants have to comply i.e., respond favourably to an explicit or implicit request offered by others. For instance, in case of allotment of tenders, etc. When the political bosses help the civil servants in their promotion or transfer, it also creates an obligation on them to comply with the demands/requests of their bosses. The code of conduct rules therefore put several restrictions on civil servants such as limits on the value of gifts to be received by them from others.. Civil servants wield excessive powers. Therefore, they are made obedient through procedures established by laws. A chain of authority exists and it is imperative for the officers to follow orders of their seniors. Humans across the globe are found to be surprisingly obedient in the presence of perceived legitimate authority figures. However, greater respect is also being given to individual ethical judgment as a basis of moral decision-making.