Transparency International (TI) is a coalition of individuals that has served as a facilitator against corruption for the past 20 years. The organization first approached its task with a focus on laws concerning corruption and whistleblowing, but corruption does have the capability to win against this institution as well. TI has produced well-known initiatives such as the annual Corruption Perception Index; other formal monitoring includes the Global Corruption Barometer, the Bribe-Payers' Index, the East (...) African Bribery Index, National Integrity Studies, and social auditors present in many nations. Diverse less-familiar initiatives noted here include integrity work in Kenyan election campaigns, monitoring of international professional sports, and integrity clubs at schools and colleges. TI is a coalition of individuals bound together by a common vision of a corruption-free world. A focus on business, a focus on integrity for those within each nation's political system and process, and a truly internation.. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for constructing a diffusion index of changes in overall perceptions with respect to corruption. The corruption diffusion index we construct lies between 0 (the greatest overall deterioration in corruption perceptions) and 100 (the greatest overall improvement in corruption perceptions) with 50 (no change in corruption perceptions) as the critical reference. The proposed methodology is applied to the 2010/2011 global corruption barometer survey data. Possible refinements (...) of the proposed methodology to capture the potentially multi-dimensional nature of corruption and the practical challenges associated with the empirical implementation are discussed. (shrink)

Global Corruption and Ethics Management: Transforming Theory into Action is focused on integrating research from a diverse array of scholars and translating it into proactive skills; the empirical content is presented clusters of short chapters, each cluster or section is followed by a synopsis of skills for implementation based upon this new knowledge. The scope of the content encompasses the work of top scholars and experienced professionals from across the globe to strategically outline the mercurial nature of (...) class='Hi'>corruption, its causes, the systems and practices that facilitate it, its short- and long-term consequences, new measures for assessing and diagnosing remedies, and steps that can be taken to prevent it. Scholars and students can use it as a jumping-off point for further research, and practitioners can immediately expand their repertoire of tools in preventing and fighting corruption through implementation of the skills synopses. Further, incorporating digital media resources such as a companion website offering links to measurements and assessments, and accessible instructors' tools will dramatically shift the benchmark for studying and implementing Global Corruption and Ethics Management; there is no other book on corruption AND ethics management with the empirical gravitas, variety of application tools, and with this level of accessibility. (shrink)

The expansion of international trade and global business competition in recent years has been accompanied by growth in corruption. While many factors may contribute to a person's willingness to participate in a corrupt transaction, the influence of religion may be significant, and leaders of religious organizations have become increasingly vocal in their condemnation of corruption. As honesty and fairness to third parties is universal to many religions, leaders of many faiths are united in their opposition to (...) class='Hi'>corruption. To better comprehend the relationship between religion and corruption, a study was conducted employing information related to religion and Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which ranks nations according to the perceived degree of corruption among public officials and politicians. The 133 countries that were included in the 2003 CPI were compared across a range of factors related to 1) the dominant religion practiced in each country, 2) perceived corruption, 3) the importance of religion to the citizens of each country, 4) religious freedom, and 5) the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Study results indicate that, when countries are grouped by dominant religion, the groups differ significantly with regard to perceived corruption, value of religion, religious freedom, and GDP per capita. Significant differences in the same factors also occurred when countries were grouped by corruption levels. (shrink)

The expansion of international trade and global business competition in recent years has been accompanied by growth in corruption. While many factors may contribute to a person's willingness to participate in a corrupt transaction, the influence of religion may be significant, and leaders of religious organizations have become increasingly vocal in their condemnation of corruption. As honesty and fairness to third parties is universal to many religions, leaders of many faiths are united in their opposition to (...) class='Hi'>corruption. To better comprehend the relationship between religion and corruption, a study was conducted employing information related to religion and Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which ranks nations according to the perceived degree of corruption among public officials and politicians. The 133 countries that were included in the 2003 CPI were compared across a range of factors related to 1) the dominant religion practiced in each country, 2) perceived corruption, 3) the importance of religion to the citizens of each country, 4) religious freedom, and 5) the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Study results indicate that, when countries are grouped by dominant religion, the groups differ significantly with regard to perceived corruption, value of religion, religious freedom, and GDP per capita. Significant differences in the same factors also occurred when countries were grouped by corruption levels. (shrink)

This study looks at how discourses of corruption in Bangladesh are discursively constructed within the official documents of Transparency International (TI), a non-profit organization that monitors corruption worldwide. It explores how an orientalist notion regarding Bangladesh is appropriated in neoliberal global discourse through TI’s corruption surveillance process. A postcolonial analysis of TI’s publications demonstrates a symbiotic relation between orientalism and neoliberalism. TI sets up a binary of ‘corrupt’ global South vs. ‘clean’ global North, reinforcing (...) the uneven power relations between nation-states that can be seen as a neocolonial move for maintaining Western hegemony and enabling neoliberal ideology over non-Western territories. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#67-68; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2020 P 49-76. (shrink)

Corruption is a pervasive problem across the world and is regularly ranked as among the greatest global challenges. Considering the role that corruption plays in exacerbating deprivation and fuelling social tension, peaceful and just societies are unlikely to come about without tackling corruption. Addressing corruption should be a high priority for those concerned with poverty eradication, peace, security, and justice. Yet, curiously, corruption has not yet been the focus of any books by philosophers working (...) on global justice topics. Corruption and Global Justice does so. Author Gillian Brock offers a normatively justified account of how to allocate responsibilities for addressing corruption across the many agents who can and should play a role. In order to know who should take responsibility and how they should do so, we need to understand multiple forms of corruption, the corruption risks associated with various activities, the interventions that tackle corruption effectively, and current policy and legal frameworks in place for addressing corruption. In addition, Brock proposes a new framework for navigating responsibility to address injustice, one that is action-oriented and forward-looking. Adopting an agent-empowering approach and harnessing the power of joining forces in effective collective action, Corruption and Global Justice addresses a significant global problem in a comprehensive way, providing the tools we need for progress as we collaborate to tackle this global scourge. (shrink)

This paper extends the discussion of business ethics by examining the issue of corruption, its definition, the solutions being proposed for dealing with it, and the ethical perspectives underpinning these proposals. The paper’s findings are based on a review of association, think-tank, and academic reports, books, and papers dealing with the topic of corruption, as well as the pronouncements, websites, and position papers of a number of important global organizations active in the fight. These organizations include the (...) World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Transparency International, USAID, the United Nations, the International Chamber of Commerce, the Organization of American States, and the Council of Europe. Our discussion departs from prior analyses by adopting a Foucaultian theoretical framing and by incorporating insights found in the virtue ethics literature. Implications are provided for international business organizations. (shrink)

Globalization is multifaceted and involves the interaction among businesses, services, governments, and societies beyond national borders. As a result, the flow of foreign direct investment, international trade in goods and services, and the economic interdependence of the nations of the world have been increasing. At the same time, much attention has been paid to the effect of corruption prevalent within many cultures and societies, and its impact on the economies, especially developing economies. This paper examines the relationship between human (...) capital investment, the level of national corruption, and the global economic integration of a nation in developing countries. Based on the data collected from over 60 countries, and building on the FDI and human capital theories, it was found that human capital investment and corruption are related to GEI. It was also found that the level of corruption moderates the relationship between human capital investment and GEI of developing economies. The findings of the study can help to deepen our understanding of GEI and have practical implications for developing countries in terms developing human capital, which plays a critical role in today’s knowledge-based economy. (shrink)

It is clear that corruption as the abuse of power is an enormous bioethical issue in the public health sector in SA, but as a challenge, it has not elicited much discussion from a global bioethical perspective. The Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights on corruption considers three matters. First, the existence of corruption as a problem of power is recognised in the health environment and condemned. Second, corruption is indicated as an immoral phenomenon (...) that harms the interests of the patient, ignores vulnerable people and neglects social responsibility. Third, it can be concluded that the UDBHR expresses the opinion that corruption has to be combated by a process of ethical decision-making, the use of ethics committees and ethics education. (shrink)

Relationships are studied between the non-observed economy, income inequality, corruption, social capital measured as trust, and various institutional quality, policy, and macroeconomic variables for a global data set of countries for two time periods accounting for social interactions. Tentative support is found for positive relations between the non-observed economy and income inequality, the non-observed economy and corruption, and a negative relation between corruption and trust. No significant relation was found between the nonobserved economy and tax rates, (...) contrasting with previous studies finding significant relations of opposite signs. Data difficulties and weak robustness tests suggest limits to our results. (shrink)

Corruption is the single greatest challenge that erodes and defeats efforts made by many nations, especially in the developing world, towards sustainable development and towards the promotion and strengthening of democratic institutions and values. This article lays out international norms of ethics and integrity, reflected also in Tanzanian norms. It argues that strategic decision is imperative and a ‘Good Governance Architecture' is meant to provide a working solution to curb unethical behaviour, corruption, and the culture of impunity. This (...) working solution – which involves economic and institutional reforms, prevention strategies, enforcement, political will, transparency, accountability, popular participation, the rule of law, and the democratic space – goes further towards the root cause of the problem than legal norms do. (shrink)

The American regulatory model of corporate governance rests on the theory of self-regulation as␣the most effective and efficient means to achieve corporate self-restraint in the marketplace. However, that model fails to achieve regular compliance with baseline ethical and legal behaviors as evidenced by a century of repeated corporate debacles, the most recent being Enron, WorldCom, and Refco. Seemingly impervious to its domestic failure, Congress imprinted the same self-regulation paradigm on legislation restraining global business behavior, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. (...) This anti-bribery initiative prohibits unethical and illegal payments made to foreign public officials in an effort to eradicate bribery as a rational-choice global market entry strategy. However, this paper illustrates, using newly complied statistics from 1977 to 2008, that the FCPA has not had a dramatic impact on U.S. global corporate behavior despite its recent high profile coverage and the tough regulatory rhetoric about corporate compliance. The paper also extends the prior Cragg and Woof FCPA efficiency study and provides current empirical evidence to resolve several unanswered questions raised by that earlier study. (shrink)

Recent studies :98–144, 2002; Weismann, J Bus Ethics 88:615–66, 2009) revealed that in the first 28 years of its existence, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was not enforced by the federal government. The Weismann study further concluded that the FCPA, designed by Congress as a self-regulatory model of corporate governance, failed to achieve the regulatory goal of deterring global bribery by U.S. companies. The current article addresses the reasons that the FCPA remains an ineffective measure to control bribery as (...) a global market entry strategy despite the highly publicized 2006 Department of Justice initiative to increase prosecutions and tighten enforcement efforts. The failure arises out of both the increased use of informal dispositions of case prosecutions,, which has made “getting caught” merely an increased “cost of doing business” and the failure to close the regulatory gaps in the statute that permit violators to slip through the enforcement net. The article updates and compiles the case prosecution data for every reported case prosecuted between 1977 and 2011. That data are then compared to the results of a 2010 integrity risk survey performed by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services and Forbes which reveal a widely held global business perception that compliance and integrity risks appear to be rising sharply and that the FCPA is ineffective in deterring bribery and corruption in foreign markets. The article aims to serve as a predictive tool for policy makers and business professionals in assessing risk in the global markets, particularly as commerce intensifies in the BRIC countries, notable for bribery and corruption. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that corruption by any firm is problematic. More importantly, its negative effects are compounded when corruption is present in large firms with global reach and corruption ceases to be a single instance but becomes a reoccurring or perpetuating phenomenon over time. Though the magnification of corruption over both time and size of operations creates scale effects that amplify its detrimental consequences, this context remains largely unexamined empirically. Thus, our research question is: (...) What are the factors that contribute to corruption by large global firms? Drawing on institutional theory, we examine the normative pressures that interact to create a vortex of corporate corruption that persisted over several years. We analyze a 9-year longitudinal dataset of 469 unique FT Global 500 companies representing 31 primary industries and 33 countries with over 3700 company year observations. Results help disentangle a complex interaction of firm-level and headquarters country-level factors that drive corruption and impact performance among top global firms. (shrink)

Ethicists and social scientists alike have advocated for the inclusion of vulnerable populations in research and decision-making on climate engineering. Unfortunately, there have been few efforts to do so. The research presented in this paper was designed to build knowledge about how vulnerable populations think about climate engineering. The goal of this manuscript is to bring the ethics literature on climate engineering into dialogue with emerging social science data documenting the perspectives of vulnerable populations. The results indicate some concerns among (...) vulnerable populations may resemble those outlined by ethicists. However, the perspectives expressed by interviewees also extend previous ethical treatments by indicating ways in which climate engineering could compound existing injustices. (shrink)

This study examines the role of both religion and culture [as measured by the cultural clusters of countries in the GLOBE study of House et al. (Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, 2004)] on the levels of perceived corruption. Covering the period from 2000 to 2010, the study uses three different measures of perceived corruption: (1) the World Bank’s Control of Corruption measure, (2) Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and (3) Heritage Foundation’s (...) Freedom from Corruption Index. A system of three simultaneous equations is used, with the jointly endogenous variables being (a) perceived corruption, (b) perceived government legitimacy, and (c) perceived government effectiveness. The results show that both cultural and religious differences are incrementally related to perceived corruption, even after controlling for other economic and political factors. Specifically, relative to the Protestant Christian religion, the non-Protestant Christian religion, the Islamic religion, and Other Religion/no Religion are positively associated with higher corruption (or negatively with anti-corruption), but the Buddhist and Hindu religions appear to be not significantly different from the Protestant Christian religion. On the cultural side, compared to the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition, the other European clusters are incrementally positively associated with higher corruption, but this tendency is offset by more effective political governance, thus leading in the case of the German and Nordic cultures to levels of corruption not statistically different from the Anglo cluster. All the non-European cultural clusters are associated with significantly higher corruption tendencies, but the overall effect is mitigated partially by either greater perceived political legitimacy (Latin-American, Middle-Eastern, Caribbean, and Pacific Islander), or greater political effectiveness (Confucian and South-East Asian). (shrink)

This book represents the first systematic qualitative analysis of a new type of collective anti-corruption initiatives. The author describes how companies can take responsibility in the fight against corruption and which six success factors play an important role in this difficult endeavor. Despite great international efforts throughout the last two decades, corruption has not significantly decreased on a global level. In light of globalization, private actors increasingly cooperate in the fight against corruption in the context (...) of sector-specific coordinated governance initiatives. In this study, this new collective approach is examined in view of its potential to curb corruption. Contents - Introduction - Theoretical Background: Self-Interest as a Means of Preventing Corruption - Methodological Approach - Multiple-Case Study Analysis - Cross-Case Analysis and Discussion - Summary and Conclusions Target Groups - Researchers and students in the fields of politics, economics, and business ethics - Practitioners such as compliance managers and other anti-corruption specialists The Author Berta van Schoor works as a compliance manager at a major German company. She wrote her doctoral thesis at the Business Ethics Chair of the Technical University Munich. As a co-leader of the regional chapter of Baden-Wuerttemberg of Transparency International Germany, she regularly speaks on topics like corruption prevention and the role of business in combating corruption. While working on her thesis she also gave lectures in business ethics and sustainability management. (shrink)

Corruption is a widespread global problem that has far reachingnegative consequences on all spheres of life. Muslim-majority countriesare most often ranked as ‘highly corrupt’ by the Transparency InternationalCorruption Perceptions Indexes. Yet the majority of studies about corruptionare predominantly undertaken from a Western perspective. A review of theavailable literature would suggest that it is hard to find a piece of work thatconsiders the problem of corruption from all its theoretical aspects from anIslamic perspective or is exclusively dedicated to (...) examining it from to theperspective of the Qur’ān, Sunnah, or indeed both together. To fill this gap, thispaper is a thematic examination of the problem of corruption according to themain sources of Islam; i.e. the Qur’ān and Sunnah, through which an attemptis made to investigate the main theoretical facets in relation to understandingand tackling corruption. (shrink)

In the past two decades academic and research literature on “corruption” has flourished. During the same period organizations and initiatives fighting against corruption have also significantly expanded, turning “anti-corruption” into a new research subject. However, despite a few exceptions there is a division of labor between scholars who study corruption itself and those who study the global anti-corruption industry. Juxtaposing corruption’s local discourses and anti-corruption international practices, this article is an attempt to (...) bring together these two intertwined research dimensions and explore how an ethnographic approach might contribute to framing them together. Firstly, it describes how corruption in Romania is often conceptualized and explained in terms of national heritage, something related to old and recent cultural history, including traditional folklore. Secondly, it explores how anti-corruption works in practice, focusing on international legal cooperation projects monitoring the progress and shortcomings both prior to and post Romania’s accession to the European Union. Finally, revealing the articulations of these two apparently unrelated research fields, the article argues that corruption’s local explanations and the circular logic of auditing observed within the anti-corruption industry share a common developmental ideology mirroring the crypto-colonialist structure of power relations and dependency among European nation-states emerging out of the Cold War. (shrink)

Twelve detailed essays were assembled by editor Sarah Armstrong, to help students obtain a balanced understanding of corporate corruption. Students will read whether global efforts against corruption are working, whether corporate profiteering is a source of environmental violence, and whether corporate rights work against the individual's rights.

The systemic role of corruption and its link to low human development is explored. The extractive resource industry is presented as anarena where conditions for corruption—monopoly and discretion without accountability—are especially intense. Corruption is maintainedby a self-reinforcing cycle. Multiple stakeholders are involved in the maintenance of and/or opposition to the cycle: investing corporations, host country regimes and officials, inter-governmental bodies like the OECD, industry associations, non-governmental organization watchdogs like Transparency International, and international agencies facilitating global investment (...) like the World Bank. Complementarity of interests between the demand and supply sides provides strong incentives for entrenched players to maintain corruptive relationships, to protect past gains and sustain current ones. Compulsory international regulation, maximum transparency, effective detection, and enforcement are recommended to enhance accountability, thereby reversing the cycle. It is also necessary to create a corporate culture built on integrity, if regulation itself is to succeed. (shrink)

Corruption involves greed, money, and risky decision-making. We explore the love of money, pay satisfaction, probability of risk, and dishonesty across cultures. Avaricious monetary aspiration breeds unethicality. Prospect theory frames decisions in the gains-losses domain and high-low probability. Pay dissatisfaction (in the losses domain) incites dishonesty in the name of justice at the individual level. The Corruption Perceptions Index, CPI, signals a high-low probability of getting caught for dishonesty at the country level. We theorize that decision-makers adopt avaricious (...) love-of-money aspiration as a lens and frame dishonesty in the gains-losses domain (pay satisfaction-dissatisfaction, Level 1) and high-low probability (CPI, Level 2) to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity. We challenge the myth: Pay satisfaction mitigates dishonesty across nations consistently. Based on 6500 managers in 32 countries, our cross-level three-dimensional visualization offers the following discoveries. Under high aspiration conditions, pay dissatisfaction excites the highest- (third-highest) avaricious justice-seeking dishonesty in high (medium) CPI nations, supporting the certainty effect. However, pay satisfaction provokes the second-highest avaricious opportunity-seizing dishonesty in low CPI entities, sustaining the possibility effect—maximizing expected utility. Under low aspiration conditions, high pay satisfaction consistently leads to low dishonesty, demonstrating risk aversion—achieving ultimate serenity. We expand prospect theory from a micro and individual-level theory to a cross-level theory of monetary wisdom across 32 nations. We enhance the S-shaped Curve to three 3-D corruption surfaces across three levels of the global economic pyramid, providing novel insights into behavioral economics, business ethics, the environment, and responsibility. (shrink)

The globalizations of capital markets in the last 20 years has led to a historic degree of financial integration in the world. It is clear, however, that globalization is not conducive to a complete homogeneity of financial markets and institutions. Among others, one element of diversity is the importance of the impact of corruption in emerging countries. Corruption decreases the credibility of financial institutions and markets. Scandals and unethical behavior in financial institutions erode confidence in such firms. Relying (...) on neoinstitutional literature, this article focuses on the link between corruption and organizational isomorphism in financial institutions in emerging countries. Therefore, our aim is to examine the institutional reasons for corruption in financial institutions in emerging countries. Our structural equation model is based on empirical research in financial institutions in emerging countries. A questionnaire was administrated to 70 top executives of financial institutions in 18 different emerging countries. (shrink)

The problem of trickster leadership is discussed in this chapter in the context of the Romanian experience of modernity. This experience has emerged as a Post-Byzantine condition; it was strongly marked by the forty years of communist regimes and was loaded with a high amount of duplicity and ambivalence. The chapter argues that the communist type of trickster leadership in Romania was the outcome of a clash between two types of corruption: a domestic one and a global one. (...) The idea of ‘forms without substance’, coined in 1868 by the historian Titu Maiorescu, is shown to be indicative of the exilic condition in which Romanians remained caught even after their country became independent. The description of this paradoxical condition is followed by a review of the main eras of Romania as a modern state, arguing that this condition has led to an accumulation of disharmony and the absurd in the social fabric of the people. (shrink)

The ethics of corruption cannot be analysed without simultaneously addressing the legitimacy of public office or entrusted power. This paper introduces a concept of core unethical corruption, defined as violations of distributed ethical obligations for private gain. In other words, it is suggested that what is ethically wrong with corruption is that it entails the violation of certain obligations attributed to agents. By explicitly relating corruption to obligations, this approach helps make ethical sense of the concepts (...) of public office or entrusted power, attending to the question of their legitimacy. Since distributed obligations are implied by a wide range of ethical theories, the concept of core unethical corruption also reflects a (partial) overlapping consensus on the ethics of corruption. (shrink)

Abstract: The systemic role of corruption and its link to low human development is explored. The extractive resource industry is presented as an arena where conditions for corruption—monopoly and discretion without accountability—are especially intense. Corruption is maintained by a self-reinforcing cycle. Multiple stakeholders are involved in the maintenance of and/or opposition to the cycle: investing corporations, host country regimes and officials, inter-governmental bodies like the OECD, industry associations, non-governmental organization (NGO) watchdogs like Transparency International, and international agencies (...) facilitating global investment like the World Bank. Complementarity of interests between the demand and supply sides provides strong incentives for entrenched players to maintain corruptive relationships, to protect past gains and sustain current ones. Compulsory international regulation, maximum transparency, effective detection, and enforcement are recommended to enhance accountability, thereby reversing the cycle. It is also necessary to create a corporate culture built on integrity, if regulation itself is to succeed. (shrink)

The systemic role of corruption and its link to low human development is explored. The extractive resource industry is presented as anarena where conditions for corruption—monopoly and discretion without accountability—are especially intense. Corruption is maintainedby a self-reinforcing cycle. Multiple stakeholders are involved in the maintenance of and/or opposition to the cycle: investing corporations, host country regimes and officials, inter-governmental bodies like the OECD, industry associations, non-governmental organization (NGO) watchdogs like Transparency International, and international agencies facilitating global (...) investment like the World Bank. Complementarity of interests between the demand and supply sides provides strong incentives for entrenched players to maintain corruptive relationships, to protect past gains and sustain current ones. Compulsory international regulation, maximum transparency, effective detection, and enforcement are recommended to enhance accountability, thereby reversing the cycle. It is also necessary to create a corporate culture built on integrity, if regulation itself is to succeed. (shrink)

The emergence of the ever-growing anti-corruption movement from the early ’90s onwards has proven itself to be of considerable importance in how we understand and explain global inequalities as well as in redefining corruption as a lack of transparency. This paper examines the timing and content of this international anti-corruption movement. It argues that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the deepening of an increasingly transnational capitalism, anti-corruption discourse has arisen as a new (...) version of the ‘white man’s burden’, a justification for intervention into the domestic politics of less powerful states as well as an explanation for their relative poverty. Concurrently, the anti-corruption movement has functioned to push states into increasing their autonomy with respect to local interests and fractions of capital in order to become more subservient and hospitable to transnational capital as a whole. (shrink)

The world today is facing unprecedented challenges of governance far beyond what the United Nations, established more than 70 years ago, was designed to face. The grave effects of global climate change are already manifesting themselves, requiring rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society if we are to arrest catastrophic and probably irreversible consequences. Science has uncovered the frightening and rapid collapse in global biodiversity, threatening ecosystems across the planet that maintain the correct functioning of (...) the biosphere, upon which we rely for survival. But there is more; there are other global catastrophic risks. We live in a world in which a diminished faith in our political leaders and governmental structures, public disillusionment with partisan politics and a willingness to believe populist promises, disturbing trends in income inequality, human rights violations and the spread of corruption have coincided with the rise of autocratic leaders, often intent on awakening the voices of nationalisms which have been so destructive during the 20th century. The rejection by some nations of the benefits of multilaterism and international cooperation, which have been at the center of the postwar global order, has heightened the risks of fundamental instabilities that could precipitate a range of major crises, disregarding the lessons of the past. (shrink)

There is a fine line in business negotiations between being perceived as corrupt and having proper engagement with the natural tension and excitement of the business bargaining process. Combining literature review and experiential observation we provide a framework that will assist global business managers to more successfully negotiate cross-cultural business transactions. We identify some archetypal underpinnings of bargaining in a business context and question the established perceptions of corruption in intercultural business dealings. We conclude that different cultural systems (...) produce variations of negotiating behaviour that need to be judged with a deeper local knowledge to avoid simply transferring inappropriate labels.
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Resisting Corporate Corruption teaches business ethics in a manner very different from the philosophical and legal frameworks that dominate graduate schools. The book offers twenty-eight case studies and nine essays that cover a full range of business practice, controls and ethics issues. The essays discuss the nature of sound financial controls, root causes of the Financial Crisis, and the evolving nature of whistleblower protections. The cases are framed to instruct students in early identification of ethics problems and how to (...) work such issues within corporate organizations. They also provide would-be whistleblowers with instruction on the challenges they’d face, plus information on the legal protections, and outside supports available should they embark on that course. Some of the cases illustrate how ‘The Young are the Most Vulnerable,’ i.e. short service employees are most at risk of being sacrificed by an unethical firm. Other cases show the ethical dilemmas facing well-known CEOs and the alternatives they can employ to better combine ethical conduct and sound business strategy. Through these case studies, students should emerge with a practical toolkit that better enables them to follow their moral compass. Finally, the cases provide an in depth look at how a corporation becomes progressively corrupted (Enron), how the Financial Crisis was rooted in ethical decay at institutions as diverse as Countrywide, Goldman Sacks, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Moody’s, and at the ethical challenges that persist in the post-Crisis, post-Dodd-Frank environment. (shrink)

This study explores the general problems associated with marketing across international markets and focuses specifically on the role of corruption in deterring international marketing success. The authors do this by introducing a broader conceptualization of corruption. The dimensions of corruption and their importance in explaining the exporters’ successes in international markets are developed empirically. Partial Least Squares formative indicators are used in a comprehensive model including consumer resources (wealth and information resources), physical distance (kilometers and time zones), (...) and cultural distance (linguistic and values differences) as alternative explanatory variables. Finally, differences in the model’s performance across data from three exporting countries (France, Japan, and the US) are delineated and discussed. For example, the successes of French and Japanese exporters in international markets are in part determined by the levels of corruption in target countries. Alternatively, corruption in target countries does not appear to affect the successes of American exporters in global markets. The conceptualization of corruption in this study extends the more narrow view of corruption solely as bribery. (shrink)

The world today is facing unprecedented challenges of governance far beyond what the United Nations, established more than 70 years ago, was designed to face. The grave effects of global climate change are already manifesting themselves, requiring rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society if we are to arrest catastrophic and probably irreversible consequences. Science has uncovered the frightening and rapid collapse in global biodiversity, threatening ecosystems across the planet that maintain the correct functioning of (...) the biosphere, upon which we rely for survival. But there is more; there are other global catastrophic risks. We live in a world in which a diminished faith in our political leaders and governmental structures, public disillusionment with partisan politics and a willingness to believe populist promises, disturbing trends in income inequality, human rights violations and the spread of corruption have coincided with the rise of autocratic leaders, often intent on awakening the voices of nationalisms which have been so destructive during the 20th century. The rejection by some nations of the benefits of multilaterism and international cooperation, which have been at the center of the postwar global order, has heightened the risks of fundamental instabilities that could precipitate a range of major crises, disregarding the lessons of the past. (shrink)

Thomas W. Dunfee, in addition to his many other contributions to business ethics literature, has generated a stream of research that attempts to tackle the issue of corruption. Dunfee's research on corruption includes three primary contributions: the introduction of "Integrative Social Contract Theory" which provides a normative theoretical framework by which to judge the morality of global business activity including corruption; the "C2 Principles", which outline specific content and implementation measures that corporations can voluntarily adopt to (...) combat corruption; and a normative evaluation of "guanxi," a concept which can lead to questionable corruption practices in China. The article will highlight Dunfee's contribution to the literature and suggest future research directions based on his academic work. (shrink)

In this paper, the Executive Head of the Global Compact shares some of his own reflections on the evolution of the Global Compact initiative – United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s voluntary corporate citizenship initiative in the area of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption. Two main themes are addressed. The first considers the Global Compact’s institutional context, examining how such an initiative is even possible in the historically hierarchical and traditionally business-unfriendly UN. The second concerns (...) the voluntary nature of the initiative and how it interacts with regulatory approaches. It explains what the Global Compact has to offer as a voluntary initiative, as well as how it can make a unique and complementary contribution to regulation-backed initiatives. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of what the future holds for the Global Compact. (shrink)

Transparency International has consistently maintained two prominent assertions: that corruption remains a global threat because no human society in the world has a clean record, and that Africa is the most corrupt region in the world. These assertions raise some fundamental philosophical concerns. The former assertion re-opens the need to ascertain whether corruption is an essence of humans, or an acquired disposition. Howsoever this is resolved forms the fulcrum of concerns on the second assertion. This paper engages (...) these philosophical concerns. The paper takes two paths to achieve this goal. The first draws from Aristotle’s essentialism and Thomas Hobbes’ accounts on human nature to engage the debate on the relationship between human nature and corruption. The second derives and discusses the plausibility and fundamental implications of the claim that Africa is the most corrupt region in the world. It was found that neither on the basis of Aristotle’s nor Thomas Hobbes’, nor even a possible African cosmology as discussed, can it be said that official corruption is essential to humans. The paper concludes that what is at issue concerning corruption as measured by Transparency International pertains to different African expectations of recompense in a protective communalism from which relatives in public offices must have drawn care, now termed “corruption” by Transparency International, which is not so regarded in the African social order. (shrink)

The peculiar features of the climate change problem pose substantial obstacles to our ability to make the hard choices necessary to address it. Climate change involves the convergence of a set of global, intergenerational and theoretical problems. This convergence justifies calling it a 'perfect moral storm'. One consequence of this storm is that, even if the other difficult ethical questions surrounding climate change could be answered, we might still find it difficult to act. For the storm makes us extremely (...) vulnerable to moral corruption. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the extent of anti-corruption reporting by ASEAN companies and examine whether coercive factors influence the level of disclosure. The authors adopt indicators from the Global Reporting Initiative version 4.0 to measure the extent of anti-corruption disclosures in 117 companies’ reports. Informed by a coercive isomorphism tenet drawn from the institutional theory, the authors propose that several institutional factors influence the extent of their voluntary disclosures. The findings reveal that a large degree of (...) variability difference between the average levels of anti-corruption disclosure in Thailand and the Philippines. The dependence on government tenders and foreign ownership are associated with the level of disclosure. Surprisingly, the United Nation Global Compact membership is not a significant determinant of anti-corruption reporting. This signifies that the membership in the international initiative does not correspond to individual company’s commitment to disclose anti-corruption information. In spite of significant efforts undertaken by global organizations to combat corruption, the level of anti-corruption disclosure is significantly different among the four countries under study. The disclosure of sensitive information such as the confirmed incidences of corruption cases requires careful consideration by the top management as it is subjected to legal implications and reputational risks. Thus, impression management can complement the coercive pressure in explaining the level of anti-corruption reporting. This study is among the first studies which explores the association between coercive factors and the level of anti-corruption disclosure in ASEAN region. (shrink)

In global business, business organizations and their representatives frequently encounter corruption and may be the perpetrators, victims, or simply participants in such acts. While international corruption has existed in multiple forms for several years, many individuals, companies, nations, and international organizations are currently attempting to reduce or eliminate corrupt acts because of their harmful effects on local economies and the quality of life of citizens. Several of these corruption curtailment efforts have been directed toward the supply-side (...) of corruption, i.e., those who make corrupt payments. In developing an understanding of corruption, however, and formulating strategies for its reduction, consideration must also be given to the demand-side of corruption, i.e., those who demand and accept corrupt payments. Accordingly, this study examined the demand-side of corruption and several related factors in the categories of government, economy and poverty, education, geography, and culture. Analysis of these factors employed the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), formulated annually by Transparency International (TI), and other sources. Several factors in each of the five categories were found to correlate significantly with perceived corruption, and strategies for addressing these issues were developed and discussed. (shrink)

According to Transparency International, Africa is the most corrupt region in the world. In South Africa, there is an annual 'loss' of about R30 billion as a result of bribery and corruption. It would appear that it is exactly the poor and the vulnerable who suffer most under the scourge of corruption. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of corruption on victim(s) and to evaluate it in an effort to formulate solutions as to (...) how such individuals can be guided and supported in the suffering and hardship that they endure and that specifically emanate from corruption. In the research, an effort was made to move away from the trend of the fragmenting of aid and to present guidelines or suggestions that can lead to a global solution, where multi-disciplinary involvement can be facilitated. The researchers agree that the church can play a key role in this, and the solution was sought in the principles expounded in 1 Corinthians 12. The research method known as action research was investigated as a workable method to be used by the multi-disciplinary aid team in their struggle against corruption. In the final instance, the principles used by Touching Africa in their work were investigated so that these could also be used in the quest for a solution. (shrink)