The governance of corruption is increasingly important in a global business environment involving ever more frequent transactions across diverse institutional contexts. Previous scholarship has theorized a fundamental tension between the enforcement of organizational compliance and the achievement of social ends, finding that efforts to remedy policy-practice decoupling in the governance of corruption and other complex global issues can exacerbate means-ends decoupling. However, these studies have tended to apply a rather static lens to a highly evaluative and processual phenomenon, meaning we still lack in-depth understanding of the dynamics underlying the interactive communicative processes of sensemaking and negotiation involved in working out the problems of both means-ends and policy-practice decoupling across different institutional contexts. To address this gap, we present a longitudinal qualitative study of the governance of corruption that identifies the emergence of locally contingent and open-ended sensemaking processes arising from and surrounding problems of decoupling. Specifically, we identify four key sensemaking mechanisms across different contexts and periods that ultimately shifted the focus of the actors away from a compliance-based approach toward a new shared understanding of progress as achievement, i.e., the mechanisms of localized theorizing, leveling, recalibrating, and public criticizing. Based on these findings, we develop a model to explain the role of sensemaking in the governance of corruption and the dynamics of decoupling.
Explore

High Level Reporting Mechanisms
A channel to raise and quickly resolve alerts about suspected bribery or unfair business practices in public tenders

Integrity Pacts
A flexible tool to raise transparency and fairness in public procurement and reduce corruption risks

Certification
An innovative approach to due diligence through Collective Action, bringing multinational companies and local suppliers together

Human rights
Connecting anti-corruption compliance programmes with efforts to address business human rights

B20 & anti-corruption
B20-G20 dialogues on integrity and anti-corruption over the years, and how to enhance their effectiveness

Initiatives database
Explore all Collective Action Initiatives worldwide

Publications
Research, evidence and analysis of Collective Action tools and approaches by the Basel Institute and others