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In this chapter, the nature and extent of corruption in the construction industry is considered from a worldwide perspective, but particularly in the context of research conducted in South Africa. The definition of corruption is expanded to include conflict of interest and unethical conduct. Corruption in the construction industry is found to be universal and pervasive, occurring in all areas, at all stages, at all levels, and in all forms. A simple triangular model of corruption is replaced by a more complex four-dimensional risk-based model. The challenge for the construction industry, in combating corruption, will essentially require multilateral action in all four dimensions of the enhanced model: eliminating and reducing opportunities where possible; relieving the pressures to commit corrupt acts; rebutting the rationales and arguments used to excuse corruption; and substantially improving and innovating more forensic methods of detection. While the decision to engage in corruption is risk-based, particularly in terms of the capacity to evade detection; in essence corruption is a cultural and moral issue for society.

Many components of infrastructure are technological: pipes, asphalt, routers, buildings and other artifacts. Others are social: organizations, standards, laws, budgets or political arrangements. Finally, some components are individual human beings who contribute to infrastructure development and maintenance, or simply make use of it in their daily lives. Relationships among these elements often shift. One typical trajectory reduces the role of individual action (choices, skills and behavior) by replacing it with social mechanisms such as organizations, laws and standards, and/or technological elements such as sensors and software. Another trajectory, equally possible and sometimes desirable, moves in the other direction, replacing technological mechanisms with social ones and/or with individual choice and action. While both trajectories create “automatic” systems, in the second case the automaticity is embodied in people and/or organizational routines. All infrastructures require users to learn and adopt these behavioral regularities. Once rendered fully habitual or incorporated into widely diffused organizational routines, such regularities can be regarded as components of infrastructure. They play a key role in the phenomenon of invisibility or transparency in well-functioning infrastructures.

This chapter explores examples from several different nations that show how infrastructures depend on habits, norms and routines, and how the persistence of automaticity in social systems and individuals creates its own forms of path dependence and structural inertia. My title plays on Anthony Giddens’s notion of “structuration” to evoke the mutually constructive character of agency and structure.

To explore and document the emerging international market for stolen tractors and plant in the United Kingdom. Whilst this may appear to be a criminological problem relating specifically to rural crime, it is a sophisticated international criminal business organised by traditional organised crime groups (OCGs) such as the Italian, Polish and Turkish Mafia’s in conjunction with a network of criminal entrepreneurs.

Using annual statistical data provided by National Farmers Union (NFU) Mutual and Plant and Agricultural National Intelligence Unit (PANIU) and other material sourced using documentary research techniques supplemented by qualitative interviews with industry specialists we present 10 micro-case studies of rural OCGs engaged in this lucrative enterprise crime. The data is verified and authenticated using narrative inquiry techniques.

There is an entrepreneurial dimension to the crime because traditional criminal families with knowledge of rural areas and rural social capital form alliances with OCGs. The practical utility of the NFU model of entrepreneurial alliances with interested parties including the police is highlighted.

Implications for research design, ethics and the conduct of such research which are identified and discussed. These include the need to develop an investigative framework to protect academic researchers similar to guidelines in place to protect investigative journalists.

An investigative framework and the adaption of the business model canvass (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010) to cover illegal business models are proposed.

Suggestions are provided for the need to legislate against international criminal conspiracies.

Uses a mixture of entrepreneurship and criminological theories to help develop an understanding of the problem from an investigative perspective.

The research on Black underachievement is well documented. But the explanations posited as causes for this failure are problematic. They are reductive and fail to explain adequately the reasons for Black children’s underperformance. The wealth of research into Black underachievement is not matched by research into Black achievement, and explanations for this are equally flawed, as are policies designed to curtail underperformance. I argue in this paper that underachievement is the product of social and cultural forces, and success is dependent on all concerned in the educational development of the child, including the child, overcoming those forces and accommodating each other in order to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for success.