Introduction

While business history is replete with examples of unethical behavior within and by companies, it is particularly since the 1990s that corruption scandals involving business have come to seriously erode public faith in companies and public authorities. As a response to this situation there has been a proliferation of international and national legislative initiatives addressing various aspects of corruption within and around business. These legal arrangements include, amongst others, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (1997), the United Nations Convention against Corruption (2003), the Sarbanes-Oxley (2002) and Dodd-Frank (2010) acts in the United States, as well as more recently, the UK Bribery Act (2010), which draws on and extends the US Foreign Corruption Practices Act of 1977, conventionally regarded as the starting point of what has now become the international regime against corruption. In addition to these more traditional hard law efforts there has been a surge of soft law initiatives promoted by intergovernmental organizations and hybrid organizational forms and networks operating at local and transnational levels. Corporations, industries, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become involved in such boundary-crossing anticorruption work. Examples include the UN Global Compact’s Principle 10 against Corruption (including the related principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), see Chapter 1 by Stachowicz-Stanusch), the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the Partnering Against Corruption Initiative, the anticorruption measures and standards under the novel ISO 26000, in addition to the pioneering initiatives by the world’s foremost NGO in anticorruption, Transparency International. In other words, in today’s globalized political economy the governance of corruption rests not only on the efforts by national governments and intergovernmental actors to regulate business, but also on businesses’ voluntary contributions and awareness of their responsibilities in the absence of strong, enforcement mechanisms.¹

It is in this wider context of global governance that management scholars and educators have begun to question the assumptions underlying traditional management education. In their view, management education not only contributed to the recent financial and moral crisis but also failed to prepare students and executives for coping with the leadership challenges and ethical dilemmas that any responsible manager is faced with in contemporary corporations. These developments are all the more important to keep in mind as the expansion of management education on a global scale over the past decades itself has been massive, if not one of “the greatest success stories in higher education.”² What characterizes the rapid spread of management education is not only that standardized ideas and frameworks of management education travel with great ease across geographical and institutional boundaries, but also that they come to challenge, coexist with, and even shape the localized dynamics of educational institutions in particular regions.

We believe that the statement “a prepared mind favors ethical behavior” carries some important truth to it and have therefore invited a group of world-class scholars with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives to develop our thinking on how teaching in anticorruption practices can be conducted today. Widely publicized corporate scandals have pushed public trust in business to an all-time low, just as it has raised questions about the role and effectiveness of university education in developing moral competencies among students and future business leaders. This book is a response to this situation. It sets out to develop an empirical and theoretical platform for rethinking business school curricula, with a specific view to understanding and meaningfully confronting the challenges of corruption of the second decade of the 21st century. In addition to this, the book reflects the engagement of multiple disciplines and scientific languages in the teaching of anticorruption. We regard this diversity to be a strength and thought-provoking at a time where we need to experiment with pedagogical ideas and tools. Some of our contributors highlight issues relating to the challenge of teaching anticorruption in particular geographical and cultural contexts such as Brazil, the Arab World, India, and Italy, while others focus on more universal, institutional, philosophical, or spiritual matters in moral teaching and learning. Most of the chapters introduce pedagogical models, frameworks, and include questions and practical exercises that teachers might draw practical inspiration from, while other chapters are offering more abstract reflections including diagnoses of contemporary social and cultural orders.

The book opens with Chapter 1, “Alleviating the Malady of Low Ethical Awareness Using PRME as a Tonic Lesson from Europe” by Agata Stachowicz-Stanusch. This chapter sets the stage for our shared concern in the book overall, providing an overview and analysis of the multilateral initiative Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME). The initiative is itself a product of the global developments briefly sketched in the first sections of this Introduction, providing guidelines for educational programs and giving business schools the opportunity to fulfill ethical objectives. As such, PRME is an instance of soft law, a voluntary initiative spurred by the UN Global Compact with a view to enhancing responsible and sustainable business, not least in the area of anticorruption. In the chapter some solutions proposed by PRME that are implemented in curricula of European PRME signatories—business schools and universities—and published in Sharing Information on Progress reports, are presented and discussed. The analysis is based on more than a hundred reports from 24 countries and was conducted in terms of 7 criteria, such as ethics and/or corporate social responsibility (CSR) courses in curriculum, environmental responsibility issues, financial (and fiscal) responsibility issues, legal responsibility issues in curriculum, special programs for MBA, case studies—understood as an educational method within CSR-related courses and projects for companies (or other organizations) conducted by students.

Chapter 2, titled “Promoting Ethical Behavior in India: An Examination of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) Approach” and written by Ranjini Swamy and Jodi Detjen, argues that educational institutions, including business schools, can help inculcate the ethical competencies necessary for people to strongly voice their concerns about corruption at the workplace. However, they face challenges in teaching these practices: (a) skepticism among students that ethical approaches are feasible and (b) the lack of learning materials/methodologies to address this skepticism and enable successful voicing of values at the workplace. Drawing on Mary Gentile’s GVV framework, the authors address these challenges. They describe the origin and main components of the GVV, its application in developing two case studies, and the experience of piloting one case study in a workshop for faculty from Indian business schools. The tentative implications for GVV case writers, teachers, and researchers are discussed.

Chapter 3, “Business Ethics Education in Brazil: Pedagogical Solutions for Combating Corruption in Brazil” by Gazi Islam and Lama Al-Arda, offers a discussion of the role of ethics education in management as a mechanism for combating corruption in Brazil. The authors argue that ethics education is important for combating endemic corruption. In order to apply this insight to Brazil in such a way as to promote actionable responses by educators, they provide an overview of the Brazilian context. They argue that the historical development of Brazil has led to a culture of administrative personalism, with the cooccurrence of highly formalized systems of administrative bureaucracy and informal personal ties, a combination that allows corrupt practices to spread easily. The authors then turn to the role of higher education in Brazil, noting the challenges faced in this sector, as well as the opportunities posed by recent rapid growth. Finally, they discuss concrete pedagogical practices that can contribute to combating corruption in the classroom, emphasizing the role of participation and dialogue, rather than recipes and codes.

Chapter 4 is titled “Business Schools as Agents of Change: Addressing Systemic Corruption in the Arab World” and authored by Dima Jamali and Amy Walburn. This chapter begins with an analysis of the main characteristics of systemic corruption in the Middle East and North Africa, demonstrating how the phenomenon represents a serious obstacle to business prosperity and economic growth. It then discusses the business case of anticorruption efforts in the region. Finally, it highlights the important contribution that business schools in the Middle East can make to fighting systemic corruption in the region, especially salient as the region faces the historical moment of the Arab Spring. The chapter details the current practices of business schools in the region and then outlines actionable steps that schools can begin to take to tackle this important topic.

In Chapter 5 by Hamid H. Kazeroony, titled “Empowering Learners to Behave Ethically: How Learners Can Find Their Way to Treat Others with Dignity?” a set of recommended guidelines are discussed with a view to educators who want to help their learners create foundations for anticorruptive approaches in treating their organizational stakeholders with dignity. This chapter offers recommendations for designing business curricula that can address ethics through treating learners with dignity with a multicultural lens when creating course objectives, activities, and learning outcomes. The chapter makes the case as to why it is important to address the relationship between learners’ dignity, curricula design, and the way we facilitate the conveyance of the ethical decision-making. The chapter also explains the relationship between the learners’ dignity, and teaching ethics through curricula design in producing the right outcomes.

Over the years, ethical and unethical behaviors have been described in terms of vices and virtues. Vice-driven misconduct has poisoned organizations around the globe with consequences that are devastating for society. Finding a remedy for the deficit of ethical leadership and organizational corruption holds great importance, and management educators around the world are seeking ways to address these issues. In Chapter 6, “Learner Autonomy, Moral Agency, and Ancient Virtues: A Curative Constellation for the Treatment of Corruption in Modern Workplaces,” Sharon E. Norris presents a curative constellation for the treatment of corruption in modern workplaces. Learner autonomy refers to the self-regulatory capacity to draw upon both internal and external resources as one chooses to adapt, change, and learn. The salient characteristics of the capacity to learn include initiative, resourcefulness, and persistence. Yet, the capacity to learn and relentless pursuit of goal attainment can be tainted by vices and moral disengagement. As a cure, when the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance influence the development of moral agency, internalized standards of what constitutes right from wrong behavior, these noble intentions serve as guides and deterrents of behavior. As virtue-based leaders strive toward goals, they are more likely to exercise functional learner autonomy rather than moral disengagement and vice-driven behaviors.

Selection and alignment of a suitable pedagogical tool is critical to ensure impact in anticorruption education. Shiv Tripathi in Chapter 7, titled “Integrating Anti-Corruption Teaching and Research in Management Education: A Framework for Giving Voice to Values (GVV) Based Approach,” looks into this dimension by exploring the issue of “fit.” Like Chapter 2, this chapter builds on Mary Gentiles’s GVV framework. The chapter first establishes the essential requirements for an effective anticorruption education methodology in terms of its learning impact. It analyzes the suitability of GVV in creating and delivering anticorruption contents and discusses how GVV can be integrated in anticorruption teaching and research. The suggested approach aims to facilitate the context-specific and stakeholders’ need-driven anticorruption curriculum creation. The focus on the possibility of real-time research-driven cocreation is another important dimension the chapter contributes to. Management educators will find the chapter useful in content and pedagogical mapping for anticorruption education in management.

According to Marco Tavanti, the author of Chapter 8 titled “The Cultural Dimensions of Corruption: Integrating National Cultural Differences in the Teaching of Anti-Corruption in Public Service Management Sector,” teaching and training for good governance and culturally effective anticorruption practices are incredibly challenging. In fact, they require a multilevel approach. Based on a review of numerous empirical and theoretical studies on the causes, nature, and correlations of corruption across countries, this chapter introduces an integrated approach to teach and train anticorruption. In doing this the chapter builds on institutional theory, principal–agent theory and cultural dimension theory, which leads the author to suggest a multilevel and multicultural anticorruption model. Through the examination of selected cultural dimensions in relation to corruption, the chapter offers an integrated model for teaching anticorruption in the public service management sector.

In “Understanding and Reducing Business Corruption Through Movies and World Wide Web Videos,” Chapter 9 of this volume, Andrew Michael presents a novel way of teaching anticorruption. The use of audio-visuals and various Web sites dedicated to fighting corruption and promoting a more ethical way of life can be an attractive and lively means of communicating the message that corruption is wrong and must be stopped. Seven movies and seven videos are suggested for viewing along with thought-provoking questions to enhance our understanding of business corruption and encourage reflection regarding its antecedents and consequences. The movies highlight potential ethical dilemmas that arise in the real world. They also include interviews with managers and experts who talk about what businesses can do to reduce corruption in developed and developing countries. The Web sites have a plethora of information regarding the nature and costs of corruption, and what can and is being done to fight different types of corruption. It is hoped that the use of these audio-visuals and Web sites will create a greater awareness of the severity of the problems arising from corruption and also an intrinsic desire to act ethically and in a noncorrupt way in business and in life in general.

Chapter 10, “Applying a Religious Lens to Ethical Decision-Making: My Ten Commandments of Character for the Workplace Exercise,” is written by J. Goosby Smith and Susan Schick Case. This chapter argues that there an international crisis in ethical decision-making and a prevalence of cultures of corruption. However, many anticorruption efforts focus mainly on explaining legal requirements rather than connecting to and facilitating the elucidation of individually held ethical standards and tying them to workplace behavior—where much corruption and dishonesty occurs. In order to reduce corruption occurring from individual decision-making and behavior, we need more individual-level anticorruption interventions. In this chapter authors present an exercise designed to elucidate pillars of character by tying them to individuals’ most deeply held beliefs: those derived not only from upbringing and culture, but from their religious and spiritual teachings. The authors argue that it is by facilitating individuals’ discovery of their most deeply held ethical behavior standards that we can effectively reduce corrupt workplace behavior—one individual at a time.

The book closes with Chapter 11 by Ernestina Giudici, Federica Caboni, and Roberta Atzori: “Testing the Effectiveness of Innovative Teaching Tools to Train Anti-Corruption Students.” This chapter proposes a message that can be summarized with the phrase at the top of the chapter, The partner of the crime of corruption is often our indifference. In fact, corruption is so widespread and multifaceted that it sometimes does not receive correct and proper attention. To verify whether and to what extent corruption can be evaluated incorrectly, the authors put at the base of their work the following questions: are students aware of the damages that corruption can cause? Are teachers adequately preparing students to be ethically correct and not corrupt? Which form of communication and teaching tools are more likely to interact with students to create a durable awareness of the corruption damages? The authors involved students from an Italian university to become coproducers of teaching tools, showing that students need to have an active role in their learning activity and that they prefer ironic communication, adopting metaphors, and dealing with serious subjects with joy.

Their evaluation of comics, social network, storytelling, and videos as the most effective objects is irrefutable. This is a big suggestion for each teacher: time has come in which they shall accept the challenge of adopting these and other innovative teaching tools.

To summarize, this book offers examples of new tools, teaching methods, and case studies for anticorruption teaching. It explores and discusses how particular approaches, such as Giving Voice to Values, may be used worldwide for teaching anticorruption. Finally it explores and discusses how curricula can be streamlined and rejuvenated in order to ensure a higher level of integrity in the world of business.