Building Integrity Among Organizations in Southeast Asia
Introduction
There remains little doubt that corruption plays a negative role in the economic and social development process. There is an expanding academic literature on the destructive impact of government corruption on economic outcomes,1 detailing how its prevalence lowers foreign investments,2 increases risks and uncertainty,3 and promotes greater oligarchic control4 among others. The debilitating impact of corruption on economic performance is not only due to the additional costs involved in the payments demanded by crooked government officials, but also through its inherent unpredictability that penalizes firms to a much larger extent than a simple increase in tax rates.5 Unsurprisingly, corruption has been demonstrated to be among the key reasons why developing countries fail to catch up economically with their counterparts in the developed world.6
Despite its palpable negative impact, the substantial investments made in the past decades to curb corruption globally have generally failed to make a permanent dent in the level of corruption across countries. One reason could be that most anticorruption policy studies, such as those conducted in the Philippines and Indonesia, focus solely on the countries’ politicians and government officials who abuse their office for public gain,7 overlooking the fact that that corruption not only provides largesse for corrupt public officials, but also accords benefits to entrenched sectors of society by generating an uneven playing field that allows politically powerful firms to enrich themselves at the expense of poorly connected companies.8 The fact that corruption in both the public and private sectors are strongly interlinked can be attributed to a government that facilitates wrong-doing in the private sector by creating a business environment where corporate theft goes unpunished.9 Any reform seeking to eliminate corruption needs to systematically identify all of its different beneficiaries in order to organize sufficient political support from corruption’s victims and overcome the vested interests that may oppose the government’s cleanup efforts.
In addition, the presence of government corruption strongly influences the country’s sociopolitical structures, through both the nation’s formal laws and regulations, and in widely held social norms and belief systems of its people.10 Societies that display a low tolerance for corrupt practices promote behavior of higher integrity, even in the absence of legal or organizational sanction.11 But when sociopolitical structures revolve around familial and clan-level ties rather than the rule of law, the transmission of corrupt practices becomes more widespread, as deep social ties among individuals makes it socially unacceptable for peers to police each other’s behavior.12
Given the deep interconnections between social norms, political structures, and public–private sector interrelations, it should be unsurprising that piecemeal attempts to directly root out corruption in particular government agencies or certain procurement processes fail to eliminate the behavior entirely. This has led certain sectors to question the process of anticorruption reform as being too limited to be able to produce permanent institutional reform.13 What may work in their stead is integrity reform.
The idea behind the integrity reform is that most institutional reform campaigns focus on punishing corruption and other instances of government malfeasance. By focusing instead on integrity—defined as the set of characteristics that improves trustworthiness to stakeholders—the programs build on identified positive strengths and opportunities, rather than the negative aspects of institutional weaknesses. By design, integrity reform programs are broader and more constructive than anticorruption campaigns, intended to create organizations and institutions that improve accountability, deepen core values, form local competences, and not least of all, control corruption.
This chapter analyzes how organizations can build integrity in societies where corruption is rife. It is aimed at detailing a comparative case study of two recently launched integrity programs in Southeast Asia. Both of these programs are designed to change social norms related to corruption in the public and private sectors, which could potentially lead to an improvement of integrity across firms, even in the absence of reform in the national legal systems. One program is aimed at changing behavior at the level of industry practices, while the other seeks to change broader norms regarding what is socially acceptable behavior.
Southeast Asia provides an apt location for studying organizational integrity programs, because it is home to a number of economically dynamic countries which thrive despite (or because of) the prevalence of widespread government corruption. The Philippines and Indonesia are not paragons of virtue, ranking 134th and 110th, respectively, among the 178 countries measured by Transparency International’s corruption perception index (CPI) in 2010. Yet, both countries have made strides in recent years in improving the level of organizational integrity among their firms.
The first case study revolves around improving integrity in the Filipino private sector, through the Integrity Initiative of the Makati Business Club, which is co-organized by the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines. The program is a private-sector led campaign that aims to promote higher ethical standards among companies through the creation of integrity validation systems and a set of awards that recognize companies for exemplary performance based on these metrics. The publicity generated by the award-giving process is hoped to improve the reputation of firms and to legitimize integrity related behavior across the country.14
The second case study is based on the Integrity Education Network and their development and rollout of integrity-based university courses in Indonesia. The aim of this program is to generate and teach courses to university freshmen that explain the differences in corrupt behavior, in hopes of battling the cultural embeddedness of corruption. The aim of this program is more ambitious, hoping that by changing norms relating to the national tolerance for corruption, firms and governments would be forced to improve their organizational practices.
Through this comparative case study, this chapter seeks to document the factors that could lead to the successful achievement of improved integrity and accountability among Filipino and Indonesian organizations. There are very few systematic investigations of the processes by which integrity initiatives can be made to succeed in contexts such as the Philippines and Indonesia, where broader social norms and weak regulatory environments collaborate to make anticorruption programs more difficult to implement.
The chapter is organized as follows. The next section provides a brief illustration of the context of Indonesia and the Philippines, particularly in terms of their recent history in combating corruption. The subsequent two sections provide a case description of the Integrity Initiative project in the Philippines, and the Public Integrity Education Network in Indonesia. The final section discusses the initial goals and achievements of the two cases, with a conclusion regarding the results of the study.
The History of Integrity Systems in Southeast Asia
The Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia and the Philippines provide an appropriate context for studying these twin integrity campaigns. These countries are the two largest archipelagic nations in the world. They are home to substantial Malay populations with broad cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity, and have a shared experience of centuries-long colonial subjugation under Western rule.15 There are also striking parallels in their recent political history, with both countries gaining political independence shortly after World War II. In the 1960s and 1970s, these countries were ruled autocratically by Suharto and Ferdinand Marcos respectively, leaders who have recently garnered the dubious distinction of being the two most corrupt leaders of all time.16 The fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 and the end of Suharto rule in 1998 have allowed both countries to adopt the trappings of democracy: relatively fair elections, free press, and rambunctious political parties and civil society groups. Despite progress made on said fronts, the presence of widespread corruption remains a problem in both polities.
The end of the Suharto regime was brought about by the tremendous economic dislocation caused by the 1997 Asian financial crisis that started in Thailand, whose impact was felt in Indonesia more than in any of its neighbors.17 The effect of the Asian economic contraction in Indonesia was aggravated by the fact that the interlocking networks of businesses controlled by Suharto, his relatives, and cronies created a centrally controlled system of patronage and plunder, which became bankrupt from the sharp currency depreciation and then simultaneously eliminated much of the funding for the government itself.
The visible impact of crony capitalism spurred a strong backlash against what Indonesians refer to by the acronym KKN—corruption, collusion, and nepotism—in the post-Suharto era. Ending public corruption has been at the forefront of national consciousness, brought about by the rise of a freer media and civil society groups that continually shine the spotlight on fighting corruption.18 In the post-Suharto reform period, termed as Reformasi, Indonesia had four presidents, all of whom undertook efforts to address the problem of corruption in the country. Anticorruption legislation was passed in 1999, 2001, and 2002, with the last law creating the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK—Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi), an independent corruption-fighting agency with its own investigators and prosecutors, and a new Anticorruption Court to hear its cases.
These and other efforts to fight corruption in terms of both prosecutions and long-term institutional reforms gained more momentum with the rise of the new Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in October of 2004.19 Yudhoyono achieved electoral victory by campaigning on an anticorruption platform, which he followed through with action during his tenure. By providing additional government resources to the government’s anticorruption entities, particularly the KPK, the campaign led to a slew of high-profile investigations and prosecutions of top-level Indonesian officials. Though the campaign began in earnest, there has been much backsliding in recent years, with some of the major officials prosecuted in the anticorruption campaign being freed early.20 Although Yudhoyono is seen as personally clean, Indonesians understand that he is hampered by remnants of prior Indonesian regimes in the parliament, judiciary, and in his own administration. Nonetheless, Indonesians see advances—albeit very slowly—in terms of anticorruption and have granted him reelection with alandslide victory in 2009.
In the Philippines, the fall of the Marcos dictatorship was also spurred by a crisis that was economic in nature. Just like in Indonesia, the impetus for the economic crisis began elsewhere, in this case the sovereign debt crisis that started in Mexico in 1982. And like its neighbor, the tangled web of business dealings among political cronies and Marcos dummies bankrupted the state treasury and caused the worst economic crisis in the Philippines since World War II. This economic crisis was prolonged by a simultaneous political crisis triggered by the public assassination of Marcos’ main political rival, the exiled former senator, Benigno Aquino, Jr. The accession by the senator’s widow, Corazon Aquino, in 1986 brought about structural reforms such as the enactment of a new democratic constitution, which included the creation of a Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to recover the ill-gotten wealth of Marcos and his cronies, an independent antigraft prosecutor in the guise of the office of the Ombudsman and an antigraft court called the Sandiganbayan in hopes of eliminating the scourge of corruption that characterized the Marcos dictatorship.21 Numerous laws and investigative bodies have since been created to combat corruption, turning the Philippines into the country with the most anticorruption measures in Asia.22
Yet, the optimism surrounding the early institutional reforms brought about by the newly democratic reforms slowly ebbed as the political realities of patronage returned. Reforms enacted in cleaning up government offices, such as the notorious tax-collection arm, the Bureau of Internal Revenue, have taken a backslide in recent years.23 Corruption scandals reaching all the way to the top political and administrative offices are continuously reported in the media, leading to the jailing on corruption and electoral fraud charges of two former Filipino presidents.
Nevertheless, the recent election of Benigno Aquino III into the presidency on an anticorruption platform in 2010 provides the country with renewed potential for combating corruption.24 Thought to be personally clean like his predecessor mother, Aquino and his single-minded determination for combating government corruption have already drawn accolades from the local and foreign business communities.
Despite the presence of presidents with strong anticorruption mandates, the anticorruption programs being undertaken by the Indonesian and Filipino governments are producing few tangible results. The political realities of operating in rambunctious democracies permeated by numerous vested interests make such top-down approach toward corruption control difficult to implement. As such, parallel work is currently being conducted by the private sector and civil society in both of these countries to potentially solidify the current momentum in corruption reduction.
Integrity Initiative in the Philippines
The genesis of the Integrity programs in the Philippines began with a group of private sector and civil society participants who were looking for their own solutions to root out corruption in the country. The proponents behind the Integrity Initiative share membership with the Transparency and Accountability Network, started in 2000, and the Coalition against Corruption that was begun in 2004. These programs involve a multisectoral coalition of private, civil, academic, and public organizations that seek to prevent instances of government corruption. These umbrella organizations have launched numerous successful programs that utilize volunteer groups to ensure the transparency and accountability of government programs. Examples of such programs include the Textbook Count program, which monitors the delivery of public school textbooks nationwide; Medicine Monitoring, which validates the procurement processes of public hospitals; and the Bantay Lansangan (Road Watch), which trains volunteers to assess the quality of public road construction.
This template of utilizing citizen-volunteers to promote transparency and lower government corruption has generated tangible successes in those projects that are monitored by these coalitions. For instance, the Textbook Count program has been able to lower the price of textbooks by 63% and lower the delivery errors to less than 5% when previously up to 40% of government textbooks procured could not be accounted for.25 More citizen involvement in other government procurement programs have led to savings as large as 58% for the Bureau of Correction in terms of their purchases of ammunition and subsistence for prisoners and 38% for the computer purchases within the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board.26
Despite the tremendous success of these individual projects in lessening corruption in the public sector, these programs have failed to make a broader impact on the general level of corruption throughout the country. The problem lies in the fact that these programs focus primarily on specific aspects of government service delivery, without being able to provide the same level of accountability and transparency throughout the entire government budgetary and procurement process. For example, the Bantay Lansangan road watch project is only able to provide volunteers to assess the implementation of road building contracts, whereas much of the malfeasance during public works projects can occur during the planning, bidding, project design, or project identification.27
Utilizing the same spirit of volunteerism and transparency, the Integrity Initiative hopes to broaden the impact of prior transparency and accountability programs by directly engaging with the proponents themselves: the government and the private sector. The Integrity Initiative is a private sector-led campaign which hopes to diminish and eradicate the vicious cycle of corruption in the Philippines, whose presence obstructs the development of a globally competitive business environment in the country and exacerbates the problem of widespread poverty. Begun in December 2010, the focus of the program is the reestablishment of proper integrity standards across the various sectors of society, including business, government, judiciary, academe, civil society, church, and media. The broad goal of the program is to institutionalize honesty, transparency, and fairness in conducting business through internal and external integrity validation systems.
The main proponents of the project are the Makati Business Club—an umbrella organization consisting of the top companies in the Philippines who are mainly based around the financial capital of the Philippines in Makati City—and the European Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines. Numerous other Philippine-based business groups, civil and academic organizations, such as the Asian Institute of Management, the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, the Bishop-Businessmen’s Conference, the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines, the Management Association of the Philippines, among others, have since joined the program.
The main program of the Integrity Initiative is project SHINE, a four-year anticorruption campaign funded by the German multinational company, Siemens. Project SHINE hopes to Strengthen High-level commitment for Integrity initiatives and Nurturing collective action of Enterprises advocating for fair market conditions. The idea behind the SHINE project is to invite different CEOs and leaders of private and public organizations operating in the Philippines to publicly commit to push ethical practices throughout their entire organizations.
The goal of the project is to harness the collective action among signatories to modify the existing business culture in the Philippines and revolutionize the way companies do business locally. As opposed to the original anticorruption programs advocated previously by the private sector, these programs do not seek to find and punish companies that engage in malfeasance or bribery. Instead, the Integrity Initiative seeks to provide companies and government agencies with positive role models by which they can better align their operations with. By highlighting positive behavior by public and private organizations, such a program advocating integrity rewards the discovery of innovations that resolve deep-seated social problems that can in turn make innovations in corrupt behavior less rewarding.
Currently, the primary task of the SHINE project is the establishment of an Integrity Pledge. The pledge is a formal but voluntary expression by each organization to abide by ethical business practices and to support the national campaign against corruption. Although any company, large or small, foreign or domestic, can sign the pledge, the signatory of the company must be either the country director or the CEO of each firm, in order to signal that the support for the integrity initiative starts from the top management itself. By the end of January 2012, more than 1,000 firms had already signed the pledge, paving the way for its formal presentation to the Philippine president, Benigno Aquino III, in a conference wherein the president himself would be expected to sign the pledge.28
Subsequent to the Integrity Pledge, the next step for the project would be to create a unified code of conduct for businesses in the country. This code of conduct will provide more concrete details to the commitments of each organization in achieving greater integrity which include steps to publicly communicate the organization’s position against bribery, corruption, and other ethical standards throughout the firm; to provide clear guidelines in the acceptance and provision of gifts to clients and suppliers; to promote greater accuracy and transparency in financial reporting, among others.
The acceptance of this unified code of conduct among firms should eventually lead to a standardized system of certification that validates whether signatories are fully compliant with the integrity code of conduct. Through the use of a reputable international certifying body, these standardized integrity measures will form the basis for continuing audits for firms, forming a similar stamp of approval akin to the ISO standards. This certification process shall be piloted in a few firms in 2013, with the rollout of the certification processes expected to begin in 2014.
Eventually, the program seeks to provide fiscal, bureaucratic, and financial incentives for companies that pass the stringent—and costly—integrity compliance certification process. Over the medium term, the Integrity Initiative hopes to create a system that rewards properly accredited companies and prioritize compliant companies in contract biddings, public–private partnership projects, customs procedures, and tax payments. For example, integrity-certified companies may be provided as “preferred supplier” status for private and government contracts, or similarly, companies may be able to access a “green lane” for speedier tax and customs payments.
Admittedly, this particular Integrity Initiative program of the Philippines remains in its infancy and it will take a few more years to assess whether such a laudable program will achieve its goals. However, this particular Integrity Initiative should be understood within the context of the other national integrity programs promoted by the Filipino private sector to promote fair business practices and lower the prevalence of private and public sector corruption in the country.
Integrity Education Network in Indonesia
In similar fashion, the Indonesia-Integrity Education Network program (I-IEN) seeks to promote the value of integrity throughout society and to create a population that is intolerant of corrupt practices within the public and private spheres. In contrast to the Filipino initiative that operates directly through the main proponents of corrupt activity, the Integrity Education Network in Indonesia works through the educational system in hopes of creating the next generation of leaders that will have a mindset toward corruption that is different from their predecessors. By disseminating and institutionalizing the principles of good governance throughout Indonesian society, the program hopes to indirectly influence government at all levels and deepen the social commitment to governance reform.
The program is organized by TIRI, Making Integrity Work, an independent, nongovernment organization that works with governments, businesses, universities, and other civil groups to finding practical solutions to improving integrity globally. Founded in 2003 in the United Kingdom, the group has international operations throughout Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Its work in Indonesia with the Integrity Education Network as one of its three programs on integrity building; other programs include Integrity@Work, which works with government and professional organizations to improve organizational integrity, and GrantCheck which promotes transparency in grant giving and aid effectiveness. With funding support coming from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Netherlands government, the I-IEN is being implemented under the Kemitraan (or Partnership for Governance Reform), a multistakeholder organization which works with government agencies and civil society in promoting and advancing good governance in Indonesia.
The basic aim of the Indonesian program is to rework the university educational system to include integrity courses throughout its curriculum. Integrity education could provide a more systemic approach in the fight against corruption as it addresses the symptoms and root causes of negative or unethical behavior. Most important to the idea of building integrity measures through public education is that the system provides scope for institutional reform by providing the platform for discussion and engagement in constituting integrity systems. Anticorruption measures, which are generally imposed through punitive action, can be limiting as it only focuses on the outcomes of bad behavior and does not examine or question the prevailing context that engenders or promotes said behavior. On the other hand, integrity measures through public education provides a methodical view of why ethical standards and accountability are critical, as it allows for a deeper appreciation and understanding of why ethical behavior promotes social change for equity and economic growth.
As of February 2012, the I-IEN has attracted 95 universities in its membership. More schools are envisioned to join and develop new modules, methods, and teaching materials that introduce the universal values of integrity to the students, with their appropriate application to the local context. Member universities are expected not only to infuse integrity courses within their curricula, but also to organize public lectures, conduct research, craft comparative studies, and exchange professors in order to strengthen its integrity campaign. Member universities are also invited to sign an agreement for the application of an anticorruption curriculum.
Under the I-IEN framework, universities are encouraged to create subjects, such as courses on state administration, which not only introduces students to the leadership and technical skills necessary for a career in the Indonesian public service, but also provides a description of the problems posed to contemporary state administrators brought about by the presence of corruption. Such exposure accords students with a better appreciation of the societal dynamics that generate government corruption, in hopes of showcasing the importance of ensuring integrity as they exit into the workforce.
Among the members of the I-IEN, Paramadina University leads in this advocacy by being the first university in the network to design and implement a mandatory course on anticorruption for all its students. Started in 2008, this unprecedented initiative of Paramadina University has allowed its students to learn about the definition and causes of corruption, for which they will be trained to present a culminating project of capturing instances of corruption using investigative methods taught during the course. To further raise awareness of corruption cases, the best projects are then presented to the public with the involvement of the university rector, faculty members, and invited guests.29
On the whole, however, the educational program is not solely designed to introduce integrity as a future concept that is removed from their current lives as students. Part of the inclusion of integrity development within the university curriculum is to showcase how integrity needs to permeate behavior at all levels. For example, students are taught not to tolerate cheating in class examinations and are informed as to how cheating in college exams undermines the integrity of public life, as the broader social problems of public corruption and deceit have roots in minor dishonest activities such as cheating. By undermining the traditionally accepted beliefs regarding the tolerance of student cheating or of professors receiving gifts, students are also expected to inculcate positive values toward integrity and honesty, and make them understand that integrity is a personal decision that has social ramifications.
Neither is the work of the Integrity Education Network confined to the classroom only. I-IEN has utilized the network of universities to organize a number of Integrity Dialogues, where participants from different professions: intellectuals, NGO leaders, media practitioners, students, professionals, professors—including international speakers—are brought together to flesh out the propagation of integrity throughout different sectors of society. The most recent dialogue involved the analysis of integrity in business communication, with the aim of promoting studies involving practitioners and academics to find solutions to the integrity problem.
As an offshoot, students from Paramadina University have organized themselves into the Integrity Movement Through Social Media (IMTSM). IMTSM members, otherwise known as “Integrity Agents,” seek to spread the concept of integrity among their student peers by harnessing their interconnections through social media, as well as through various offline media such as stickers, posters, and t-shirts. These students have already visited their counterparts in other universities in hopes of attracting more members to their movement. The challenge now for the I-IEN is how to sustain these initiatives and how they could mobilize support from their stakeholders in creating a critical mass to forge integrity systems that transcend beyond the education sector and into the government and private sectors. In November 2011, the I-IEN held its third National Annual Coordination Meeting (NASCAM) in Denpasar, Bali, to verify the progress that had been accomplished by members, as well as to formulate the future directions of its integrity programs.
The Future of Integrity Systems in Southeast Asia
As mentioned earlier, the design of integrity programs involve the mastery of the skills required to develop: (a) improvements in institutional accountability, (b) understanding of institutional core values, (c) key, local competences, and (d) corruption control measures.30 Despite the seeming difficulty of implementing such a multipronged skill building campaign, the launch of the twin integrity initiatives in the Philippines and Indonesia has achieved quick and immediate successes. Within months of their launch, both programs have been able to garner a substantial amount of private sector signatories and academic partners in each program, respectively.
Notwithstanding issues on definition, the ongoing integrity initiatives have been able to broaden the public conversation on the importance of building integrity in institutions in both countries and on imbuing its participants with the desire to contribute in arresting corruption in a systematic fashion. The story in Indonesia is a telling example of the systematic nature of the campaign as the Kemitraan (Partnership for Governance Reform) enjoys wide public support through its bottom-up approach on integrity education recognized by both the private and public sectors. It is through the Kemitraan network that TIRI dovetails its integrity educational reform campaign, as detailed in the prior section. And parallel to this, under a similar program with TIRI called Integrity@Work, integrity education programs are also currently in place for government bureaucrats and middle management staff with the plan of setting up a training center within a university from which the outputs of the I-IEN and Integrity@Work can be synergized.
Although less systemic in its approach to promoting integrity across the different sectors of Philippine society, the Philippine initiative has similarities in terms of its tactics in advancing its membership to its cause. Due to its more focused emphasis on private sector organizations, the methods utilized by the Makati Business Club on attaining universal membership for its integrity initiative is based on tactical targeting of the diverse multisectoral associations that comprise the gamut of the Filipino private sector: for example, multinationals (American Chamber of Commerce, European Chamber of Commerce), financial corporations (Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines), procurement experts (Procurement and Sourcing Institute of Asia), marketers (Philippine Marketing Association), and so forth.
The systematic nature of such approaches, especially in comparison to prior piecemeal anticorruption programs, may truly be the way forward in achieving an effective private sector-led corruption control reform program. What remains to be seen is whether such public conversations can snowball into concrete actions beyond the signup sheets and membership drives. Organizers are cognizant of the fact that the more difficult task involves translating these broad definitions into action items, codes of conduct or integrity standards that are deemed acceptable across a wide swath of Southeast Asian organizations.
Part of said discourse requires the contextualization of these Western definitions of integrity within the Indonesian and Filipino cultural value system, especially that the fingerprints of Western corporations and NGOs are predominant in the funding and organization of both integrity programs. Though there may be a reason to assume that much of the values spouted by integrity initiatives against classroom cheating, bribery, or opaqueness of transactions can be deemed as universal, the implied definition of integrity as being based on personal and organizational choices—as opposed to being societally and collectively determined—harks toward Western cultural systems that maintain the primacy of the individual over the collective, as opposed to the more collectivist mentality prevalent among Asian organizations. The cultural translation of integrity behavior becomes more problematic when translated into particular activities, such as gift-giving, networking, or whistleblowing, which have different connotations and denotations depending on the context of the activity.
In essence, integrity articulation involves social expectations that the network organizers need to be sensitive to—especially on how it is translated into individual organizational commitments that promote and sustain behaviors characterized by integrity, especially in the case of integrity building in government. Moreover, the vagaries of political administration should not lend itself to a weak appreciation and understanding of integrity measures as this invariably impacts on the very accountability and competence of power structures. Without the eventual involvement of government, it may be difficult for these reforms to take root permanently.
From the experiences of Indonesia and the Philippines on integrity building measures implemented by private and nongovernmental organizations, another curious question would be as to how governments in said countries design and roll out parallel measures or complementary programs that can broaden and deepen the reach of integrity systems in its government agencies. Interestingly, inasmuch as these countries’ governments are pursuing governance reforms actively, integrity initiatives are oftentimes similarly understood as anticorruption education, and vice-versa. While interpretations on anticorruption and integrity measures may have been inexplicably interchanged, it does not help that interest in the equally important task of instituting systems of accountability and integrating principles of ethical behavior within their particular government administrative context is not gaining much traction.
To illustrate, in 2001, the Philippine government created the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC) which required government agencies to develop their own Integrity Development Action Plans (IDAP) as a program to build integrity in public institutions. The guidelines of the IDAP included 22 anticorruption measures or indicators, which included prevention, education, investigation, and enforcement, and strategic partnership all aimed at a multipronged strategy in fighting corruption. As a reportorial requirement, a government agency submits its IDAP to the PAGC using the indicators to a scorecard. Based on the results, the PAGC then would then make the determination of what particular integrity measure is suited for a particular agency.
Admittedly, as integrity-building measures take time to gain momentum, and with PAGC focusing most of its work in the investigation of corrupt government officials, little discussion was materialized on how the IDAP was to be implemented and how it was able to achieve its targets. Unfortunately, the PAGC was abolished in 2010, vanishing with it the chance for the public to see what the overall picture is when it comes to building integrity in the Philippine government.
In summary, the current approaches initiated by the Integrity Initiative and the Integrity Education Network provide an inspired step forward in improving private and public sector governance in Indonesia and the Philippines. The emphasis on transforming social norms and rewarding positive behavior, combined with a systemic approach in tackling governance reform, provides a more concrete roadmap toward achieving the ambitious goal of promoting more ethical practices across governments and private organizations. Given the current political climate prevalent in both countries, such a process could indeed translate into genuine reform as integrity norms are built and as these new norms tap into the growing voter sentiment regarding the corrosive nature of the lack of good governance.
Ironically, what may hamper the success of each program is that both initiatives overlook a crucial stakeholder in their respective reform programs, with the Filipino Integrity Initiative requiring greater grassroots participation among the youth and with the Indonesian Integrity Education program missing the deeper involvement of the private sector. From our vantage point, the Indonesian experience on integrity education provides the better chance of creating an integrity infrastructure that can provide both scope and breadth for meaningful societal changes, because it systematically tackles the cultural roots of the problem. Duplicating each program in both countries could enhance the probability that the programs achieve fruition. Such a cross-pollination of programs across the two countries would go a long way in promoting integrity in both societies, which in turn would allow both countries to finally live up to their long-awaited promise of economic development.
Key Terms
Corruption—the pursuit of private interests through the abuse of organizational resources in nonconformity with generally accepted social practices.
Integrity—the set of characteristics that improves trustworthiness to stakeholders.
Study Questions
1. Compare and contrast the traditional anticorruption measures enacted in different countries with the integrity building measures enacted in the Philippines and Indonesia. Which approach will more likely lead to more positive economic outcomes?
2. Compare and contrast the Integrity Initiative in the Philippines and Integrity Education Network Indonesia. Which approach will more likely lead to an improvement in integrity building in either countries?
3. Which aspects of the Filipino Integrity Initiative should be implemented in Indonesia? Which aspects of the Indonesian Integrity Network should be implemented in the Philippines?
Further Readings
Campos, J. E. (2001). Corruption: The boom and bust of East Asia. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Kimura, H., Suharko, Javier, A.B., & Tan, A. (2011). Limits of good governance in developing countries (pp. 39–70). Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Gadjah Mada University Press.
Quah, J. S. T. (2011). Curbing corruption in Asian countries: An impossible dream? Singapore: Emerald Group Publishing.
TIRI. (2012). The integrity challenge, Vol. 2012. Retrieved from http://www.tiri.org/index.php?option=com_contentand task=viewand id=490and Itemid= accessed 21.02.12.