This Guide is intended to help companies meet the legal, competitive, economic and ethical challenges posed by corruption as they do business around the world. Information in this Guide is intended for use by business but should also be of interest to governments and other organizations concerned about reducing corruption.

Major advances are occurring in both the law and internal corporate practice to prevent corruption in business. Specifically, international conventions, new national laws, increased enforcement of existing laws, and voluntary initiatives against corruption all contribute to growing global support for anticorruption measures.

Although most attention has focused on government enforcement and steps taken by individual companies to improve their internal systems and controls, important developments also are occurring in a third area commonly referred to as “Collective Action.”

Innovative tools are being developed that allow companies to come together collectively and voluntarily to raise practice standards and to reduce corruption and competitive risks on a project and sectoral basis. These range from integrity pacts for individual procurements to codes of conduct and collective public policy initiatives.

Although a significant number of tools for Collective Actions are now available, and continue to evolve, many companies that want to be more proactive in fighting corruption do not know about these tools or have insufficient practical information to consider them. A coalition of interested businesses and other experienced anti-corruption experts has therefore produced this Guide to support the global business community and other stakeholders by filling this information gap. ...

Visit Fighting Corruption through Collective Action: A Guide for Business Download Page

You can download full publication in PDF format.

CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Background
3. How to fight corruption
4. Fighting corruption through
Collective Action
5. How to implement
Collective Action
6. Best practices and contact list

In the summer of 2007, WBI began a series of discussions with representatives of the business community, NGOs and other anti-corruption stakeholders focused on the proposition that business could and, in fact, wanted to do more to be an active force for constructive change in high risk geographies or sectors. It became clear in the discussions that business wanted to go beyond internal compliance programs to external operational activities which would improve market and project transparency and competitiveness.

A core group then met in the fall to discuss, research, and better understand a proven anti-corruption concept involving business as an integral participant: Collective Action. Other interested parties took on guide review status because of pre-existing priorities. Meeting generally weekly by telephone, video-conference or in-person, the core group quickly found that numerous successful Collective Action examples existed – but were not well known or readily available. The identified goal then became to produce a guide – in the PowerPoint® language of business – which organizations could use as a resource to better understand and apply the various forms of Collective Action. On the basis of informative and enlightening discussions which often occurred during this process, the group also realized that a web portal was needed to continue these communications, and to permit others to engage and contribute, and the result is www.fightingcorruption.org.

The core group looks forward to an expanded and on-going dialogue on how business can better use Collective Action and other anti-corruption methodologies to further advance transparency, integrity and accountability.

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment