Collective action refers to actions undertaken by individuals and/or groups towards a collective purpose or goal. Attempting to foment collective action as an anti-corruption strategy is a tactic that is enjoying growing support. However, experience suggests that collective action is difficult to foster, and evidence of success is scarce. 

This is the third and final publication of Global Compact Network India's Collective Action Project. In it, UNGC companies and business entities share practical experiences as to how they have been investing in getting their processes and procedures in order, so that businesses could be free of corruption, ensuring transparency in their supply chains and procurement mechanism.

Transparency in the extractives sector is widely seen as a key tool for improving accountability and deterring corruption. Yet for those very reasons, it is a puzzle that so many governments in corruption-prone countries have voluntarily signed up to greater scrutiny in this area, by joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

Collective action initiatives in which governments and companies make anti-corruption commitments have proliferated in recent years.

This apparently prosocial behavior defies the logic of collective action and, given that bribery often goes undetected and unpunished, is not easily explained by principal-agent theory. Club theory suggests that the answer lies in the institutional design of anti-corruption clubs: collective action can work as long as membership has high entry costs, members receive selective benefits, and compliance is adequately policed.

This report aims to provide an overview of business integrity and anti-bribery legislation, policies and practices applicable to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) operating across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.

Companies today, in particular banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions, increasingly operate their businesses in a group structure. These financial groups have a growing presence in markets worldwide and the economy as a whole. To do business effectively and efficiently in group structures, corporate groups should be managed in a holistic and integrated manner, in much the same way as an enterprise.

This paper sets out lessons from a mixed-methods study that identified and explored ‘positive outlier’ cases of bribery reduction in challenging governance environments. It discusses the two cases the research examined in depth:

Settlements can provide an important channel to hold companies to account for wrongdoings and resolve foreign bribery and other cases without resorting to a full trial (civil or criminal), or contested administrative proceeding.

Yet, their deterrent effect can be questionable if they are not transparent, and do not provide effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions and if there is no judicial process. Finally, there should be reparations for the victims of the offence.

In this article, we propose to comprehend the corruption mechanisms of tender bidding processes in terms of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices within informal networks. 

This Georgia country report is part of a research project funded by the Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) Programme of the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the British Academy. 

The project has identified informal practices in selected countries in order to establish their general and specific features in comparative analysis; assess their impact based on the functions they perform in their respective economies and indicate the extent to which they fuel corruption and stifle anticorruption policies.