The Basel Institute on Governance has joined forces with the Alliance for Integrity and more than 60 partners from 12 countries to raise awareness of the importance of business integrity – and the challenges it can present to individuals, their families, business partners and society.

Corruption, particularly bribery of government officials, inflicts substantial damage on people, society, and the world, and warrants control. Collective efforts to control corruption tend to focus on rules and compliance with those rules. This paper suggests that collective action also consider the creation of strong ethical cultures in business firms. Implementation of such programs is impeded by the difficulty in prescribing a course of action and by the difficulty in measuring the strength of an ethical culture.