Fighting corruption: How binding commitments of business firms can help to activate the self-regulating forces of competitive markets

Ingo Pies and Stefan Hielscher

No 2019-04, Discussion Papers from Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Chair of Economic Ethics

Abstract: Corruption is a serious and complex challenge for modern societies. Fighting and preventing corruption thus requires constructive learning processes. In this paper, we systematically integrate a market ethics perspective with a business ethics perspective constitutive for the study of 'ordonomics'. In doing so, we argue that, first, companies have a(n) (common) interest in actively fighting corruption using collective forms of self-regulation and, second, we show what companies can do about it internally. We derive the first argument from a market ethics perspective that shows how companies suffer from a race to the bottom that results from corruption under market competition. The second argument is based on a business ethics perspective that shows how cartels of silence within companies can create significant obstacles for well-meaning top management to address the problem effectively.

Keywords: corruption; prevention of corruption; governance; commitments; social dilemmas; integrity management; Korruption; Korruptionsprävention; Selbstbindungen; soziale Dilemmata; Integritätsmanagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:mlucee:201904

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