TITLE:Corporate culture and anti-corruption study
NAME: Janet M.
BIO:
Janet Dine is Professor and Director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, London University. Her research is in the field of international economic law, and looks especially at the role of transnational corporations in the global economy. Her most recent book on the topic is Companies, Inter-national Law and Human Rights, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
SUMMARY:
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I. Corruption: Definition Issues
One definition of corruption was put forward by Edward Banfield in 1975. He described corruption as a relationship between three parties: the public as principal, the public official as agent obligated to fulfill the wishes of the principal, and a third party seeking to have the agent work on its behalf instead. n12 This is a simple description of corruption but it raises a number of issues. Kleinig and Heffernan explain, "it is not the predominant understanding of the term in the Oxford English Dictionary; it leaves out much of what has historically been deemed corrupt; and it relies on the superficial clarity of a private/public distinction and an unexamined view of what counts as improper use. Corruption is not the exclusive failing of public officers; there may also be personal corruption, corrupt institutions, and corrupt cultures." n13 Heidenheimer distin-guishes between black, white and gray corruption, with black corruption being perceived by both elites and ordinary people as fundamentally detrimental to society, white acts seen by both groups as of some benefit to society, and gray acts those about which the groups differed. n14 Holmes debates the definition but settles for a "core" definition for the purpose of studying corruption in post-communist states. n15