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The literature on corruption and whistleblowing is increasing over the past years. However, the authors contend that individual reactions to a corrupt proposal could differ from the mentioned behaviours. On these grounds, the authors contend that a “grey zone” between accepting corruption and whistleblowing does exist. This paper aims to explore what are the behaviours defining this “grey zone” as nuanced behaviours adopted to react to a corrupt proposal.

The authors draw from Miceli and Near’s process of whistleblowing to open the scope for the comprehension of grey behaviours in the decision-making process following to a triggering event. The authors adopted a qualitative and explorative approach by interviewing 27 Italian public servants through open questions and storytelling to explore what kind of behaviours could define the grey zone.

The findings unveil nuanced behaviours in the grey zone configuring neither as corruption nor whistleblowing, ranging from ignoring the corrupt proposal to explicit contraposition. Also, they reveal different social and individual outcomes affecting future relationships in organizations. The findings allow to extend Miceli and Near’s process of whistleblowing to the wider spectrum of response behaviours to triggering events such as receiving or assisting to a corrupt proposal.

Limitations might be recognized in that the situations detected could be only a part of a possible wider “grey zone”. However, the authors believe that the findings could encourage future research to continue exploring the grey zone to enrich its comprehension. Also, the paper offers useful and interesting insights on an undebated issue that has a prominent value under the theoretical, practical, social and policymaking perspectives.

From the practical and policymaking perspective, the advancement of a debate contending the existence of a grey zone made of nuanced behaviours between corruption and whistleblowing could provide support both for organizations and policymakers to a better understanding of individual behaviours and improving actions and policies to prevent corruption and encourage whistleblowing.

As the authors are at least unaware of studies debating on the grey zone with specific reference to corruption and whistleblowing, the paper advances a discussion on the grey zone between corruption and whistleblowing as a continuum of nuanced behaviours that could provide a starting point for further fine-grained analyses.

We review the existing laboratory experimental studies on corruption that have generated results with clear policy implications. We present and discuss experimental findings on the role that both monetary incentives and nonmonetary motivations may play in corruption decision-making, and, hence, in the fight against corruption.

The literature states that rationalization strategies contribute to a spread of corruption in organizations. They are supposed to serve not only as post hoc justifications but also as ex ante determinants of corrupt behavior. This empirical study aims at challenging this theoretical assumption.

The authors gained empirical data in a business simulation game where participants had the opportunity to act corruptly. The sample included both university and high school students.

The results show that post hoc rationalizations primarily highlight the “positive” intention behind corrupt action. As relationships with important person‐based determinants of corruption are lacking, it is questionable whether rationalization strategies possess potential as ex ante determinants of corrupt behavior.

The design of the study only assesses rationalization strategies post hoc. Therefore it does not allow for examining causal effects, only the investigation of relationships. Future research should aim at addressing this issue, including both ex ante and post hoc assessment of rationalization strategies.

The paper is a first attempt to examine empirically the function of rationalization strategies in the context of corruption in organizations.

Strategic management scholars have acknowledged the existence of a dark side of strategy, but have failed to consider how companies engage and adapt “dark and immoral” non-market strategies to gain competitive advantage and to maintain corrupt alliances. In this chapter, I analyze the use of corruption as a non-market strategy by construction companies’ suppliers of the Oil and Gas Company Petrobras from 2002 to 2014. The author use verifiable court decisions and analyze the set of rules created by a corrupt cartel to enact their corrupt strategies. The author extend the management literature by showing how a corrupt group of firms adopt a series of strategies not only for their short-term competitive advantage but also to maintain their internal cohesion. Finally, the author develop a model that explains the maintenance of long-term corrupt relationships.

The primary purpose of this exploratory paper is to propose a novel analytical framework for examining corruption from a behavioral perspective by highlighting multiple issues associated with consumerism.

This paper examines the relationship between excessive consumption activities and corrupt acts, drawing upon existing literature on corruption, consumerism and consumption, as well as multiple reports and cases of corruption and money laundering in Indonesia. With regard to corruption networks, this paper analyses the associated behavioral patterns and social dynamics by using the Fraud Triangle and the Fraud Elements Triangle frameworks to examine the phenomenon of living beyond one’s means. This paper also addresses the notion of sacredness in the context of consumer activities and how such sacredness plays a role in causing otherwise honest individuals to engage in corrupt acts.

The author established that corruption represents a complex societal issue that extends across several dimensions of society, encompassing both horizontal and vertical aspects. Consequently, addressing this problem poses significant challenges. Excessive consumption has been identified as one of the various behavioral concerns that are implicated in the widespread occurrence of corruption in many nations. Individuals who partake in excessive consumption play a role in shaping ethical norms that serve to legitimize and rationalize immoral behavior, therefore fostering a society marked by corruption. The act of engaging in excessive consumption is also associated with cases of money laundering offenses that are connected to corruption and several other illicit activities. The lifestyle of corrupt individuals is one of the primary behavioral concerns associated with corruption, as “living beyond means” is the most common behavioral red flag among occupational fraud offenders worldwide. The phenomenon of consumerism may also shape the minds of individuals as if it were an “implicit religion” due to the fact that it may generate human experiences that elicit highly positive emotions and satisfy certain sacredness-associated characteristics. The pursuit of transcendental experiences through the acquisition and consumption of sacred consumption objects may heighten the incentive to commit fraudulent acts such as corruption.

This self-funded exploratory study uses document analysis to examine the corruption phenomenon in Indonesia. Future studies will benefit from in-depth interviews with former offenders and investigators of corruption.

This exploratory study contributes to advancing corruption prevention strategies. It does this by introducing a novel analytical framework that allows for the examination of several behavioral issues associated with consumerism, which have the potential to foster the proliferation of corruption.

This exploratory study highlights the importance of comprehending the intricacies of consumerism, namely, its adverse effects on the proliferation of corruption.

Lab studies on culture and corruption have led to some puzzling, contradictory results. This chapter begins with a discussion of nonexperimental work in this area and evaluates the experimental findings in the context of earlier research. We sketch out the channels through which culture interacts with corruption (i.e., through institutions and social norms) and argue that discrepancies in experimental results may be due to differences in design (including repetition or unobserved variation in beliefs) or due to differences in the response to punishment across societies. In addition to exploring design-based reasons for previous contradictory findings, avenues for future research include: behavioral responses to different types of externalities; replicating results in different countries; and utilizing the lab to formulate effective anticorruption measures.

The above quotations highlight the adverse consequences of corruption in many countries around the world today. Indeed, the research taboo on corruption, which Gunnar Myrdal identified in 1968, no longer exists, and the silence on the “C” word (corruption) in the World Bank was broken by James Wolfensohn in his famous October 1996 speech, which focused on the negative consequences of the “cancer of corruption” on the World Bank's aid programs.

In Chapter 2, Ananish Chaudhuri surveys the empirical evidence on the existence of gender differences in individuals’ propensity to engage in corruption. While the chapter begins with a review of the findings generated by cross-country studies, the main focus of the discussion is in the insights provided by laboratory experiments specifically designed to test for gender differentials in corrupt transactions. According to the carefully conducted survey of the literature, the existing experimental evidence suggests that females are either equally or less willing to engage in corruption than males; there is very little evidence that women behave more corruptly than men. The author discusses possible reasons for gender differentials in corrupt behavior, such as risk aversion and preferences for reciprocation. Finally, Chaudhuri emphasizes that gender effects are more likely to be observed in studies conducted in developed countries and calls for further research to be conducted in developing countries, with the aim of shedding light on the relationships between gender differences in corrupt behavior and the cultural background of the experimental participants.

The purpose of this paper is to offer anti‐corruption experts' personal assessments of the progress international organizations have made in fighting corruption.

This paper contains a survey of the viewpoints of a number of anti‐corruption experts who themselves are current or former staff of international organizations, or who – from their positions within the private sector or in non‐governmental organizations – are able to offer a unique and distanced perspective on the key corruption‐related issues and challenges facing international organizations today.

It is agreed that international organizations today are at a cross‐roads in their individual and collective fight against corruption. International organizations must weather the corruption scandals that have recently plagued several organizations, and must confront the question of whether their staffs, boards, and member governments indeed have the ability, will, and commitment to fight corruption. To address these challenges, international organizations must adopt proactive investigative strategies when combating corruption, seek greater cooperation with each other, and must ensure that their respective investigation units have the necessary resources and independence to effectively detect, investigate, and prevent corruption.

The paper offers a realistic prognosis on the future of the anti‐corruption movement within and among international organizations.

Individuals and organizations will exhaust all available gains from trade and the resulting allocation of resources will be efficient when allocation will reflect accurately society's opportunities and preferences – including preferences related to individuals' ethical standards. Which behaviours are ethical and which are unethical? International society due to globalization has to develop and establish common ethical principles of behaviour in social life taking into account religion and world civilization. The basic values of humans and life as creation have to be identical all over the world, which means that human behaviour should be similar all over the world. So, similar actions should be ethical or unethical similarly all over the world and principles established by different kinds of societies should not alter the basis of values of life and humanity.