Combating Corruption in International Business: The Big Questions

The last several years have seen a significant rise in the efforts of governments to combat the supply side of corruption. Due to these increased efforts, now is an important time to ask some of the big questions in combating corruption. In short, my big questions relate to understanding why corporations pay bribes, what corporations need to do to stop paying bribes, and how to encourage corporations to actively fight corruption (that is, to combat corruption beyond their organizational boundaries). The first section of the essay addresses the question: why do corporations pay bribes? This leads to two additional questions: why do employees pay bribes, and when are compliance and ethics programs effective in preventing the payment of bribes? The next big question focuses on issues of corporate social responsibility: what should a corporation do to combat corruption? That is, is it sufficient for a corporation to simply ensure that its employees do not pay bribes, or should the corporation do something more?