Challenges and policy recommendations on promoting integrity.

 relevant organizations deploy education and training concretely in their efforts to promote integrity, members of the Business at OECD global network were invited to submit use cases, which are set out in this part of the paper. The collection of use cases was supported by the following guiding questions:

 • What are the top corruption risks that your orga- nization faces? 

• What are the main characteristics of your education and training initiatives to spread integrity and ethical standards within your organization?

 • What results has the initiative achieved so far? What have been its the main success factors?

 • Did you encounter any problems when rolling out your project? 

• What measures could governments/the OECD take to support your efforts? 

The use cases included in this paper originate from a wide variety of sectors, ranging from food and drink, electronics and telecommunications to e-commerce, medical technology, and accounting. Whilst most use cases were submitted by companies, some reflect the experience of professional bodies and business organizations. Examples of how universities and public training institutions integrate anti-corruption in their curricula are provided as well. These use cases, complemented by desk research and contributions from the members of the Business at OECD Anti-Corruption and Education Committees, served as the basis for the identification of success factors as well as challenges in the deployment of education for anti-corruption purposes which are presented in the following sections. The use cases also helped develop the policy recommendations set out in this part. They include suggestions on how national governments and the OECD can help boost the synergies between education and the fight against corruption and how they can support companies in this regard. The complete selection of use cases received is set out in the final part of this paper. 

 Success factors

The staff composition of an organization changes continuously as people join and leave or take up new roles in different parts of the same organization. Activities and risk factors change, too, over time. For this reason, training should be provided at regular intervals and with regularly updated contents to ensure long-term impact. For example, many companies have their employees undergo integrity training as soon as they join the organization or change their role and at regular intervals thereafter. The intervals and type of training provided also need to take into consideration the applicable legal requirements and overall risk assessment of the organization in order that, ultimately, staff is enabled to address relevant risks in a timely and efficient manner. Trainings can be complemented by periodically including integrityrelated content in staff meetings, newsletters, and other staff engagement tools. Regarding the training contents, a one-size fits all approach is seldomly sufficient. Instead, different staff categories may require different types of integrity training, whose content is tailored to their seniority level, role, risk exposure, cultural background, or education level. Innovative approaches to training that include interactive features can increase the impact and overall engagement rate. In some cases, a company’s regional or local branches may be best placed to identify the concrete training needs of their staff. Digital tools and platforms can help make training materials available across the organization without a major logistical effort but should be complemented by in-person exchanges, especially where the staff does not have access to a personal laptop. Furthermore, e-learning platforms allow organizations to better track and report on progress and implement appropriate corrective measures where needed. By regularly evaluating the impact of initiatives and the level of staff engagement, the quality of the training modules on offer can be maintained and improved over time.

Challenges 

Whilst education can be a powerful tool to fight corruption and promote integrity, there are a number of challenges and limitations that governments, companies and education institutions face in this context. Education sector: Integrating content on public integrity in national education systems can be difficult in the face of academic independence and school curricula that run over many years. As school and university curricula are important transmitters of values, reforming them can be a cumbersome and politically charged process involving a multitude of stakeholders with competing priorities. Moreover, opportunities for and approaches to curriculum reform and the levels of cooperation between the education and anticorruption bodies differ from country to country. Companies, public administrations and non-profit organizations: Companies, public administrations and non-profit organizations also face different challenges when using education as a means to promote integrity amongst their staff. They include the following: 

• It is difficult to devise innovative and interactive training formats and to dedicate sufficient time and resources to integrity capacity building and guidance over the long term. 

• A dedicated integrity body or dedicated inhouse personnel can help boost integrity amongst the staff of an organization. However, ensuring clear responsibilities for integrity and an effective coordination of the entities responsible for integrity training poses additional challenges. 

• Raising awareness about corruption needs to be carefully tailored to be impactful and avoid undesired outcomes. Perceptions of rampant corruption can increase apathy among citizens and reduce their motivation to uphold public integrity norms. Therefore, any efforts need to be adapted to the specific integrity challenges a society faces and sensationalizing the issue needs to be avoided. Rather, awareness raising efforts should offer tangible solutions for individuals to counter corruption.

 Recommendations to policymakers.

 National governments and the OECD can boost the role of their education systems in fostering integrity in the following ways:

 • The incorporation of ethics components should be a standard component of primary,secondary and tertiary education curricula across OECD countries OECD countries could collect and share best practices on the approaches taken in this regard to maximize the impact. 

• The OECD created a list of Public Integrity Indicators and it regularly evaluates the performance of its member countries against them. In order to give due consideration to the critical role that education plays in fostering integrity in society, an additional indicator on “Fostering integrity through education and awareness raising measures” should be added, using the SMART method for calculation. This would help shed light on the activities that countries are taking in this area, promote the exchange of best practices, and facilitate tracking progress. 

• When promoting education and training in the fight against corruption, public authorities should always consider who organizes and finances these educational programs to avoid conflicts of interest and integrity breeches. Transparency of publicly supported initiatives is key for this. 

National governments and the OECD can support the business community’s efforts to use education and trainings as tools to promote integrity in the following ways:

 • The public sector could support the efforts of companies to use trainings for building a culture of integrity in their organization by providing incentives, such as tax breaks for expenses related to such trainings or access to accelerated or simplified administrative procedures. In the same vein, financial support to tertiary education programs on anti-corruption could bring down their costs, making them accessible to more students. 

• Integrity awards granted by governments to companies with successful anti-corruption measures and programs based on transparent criteria could play a meaningful role in supporting the efforts of companies in this regard. These awards should be given by regulators or tax authorities to companies that demonstrate a good example of ethics and integrity. They would incentivize the actors involved and help spread. Their impact would be even higher if they were granted by an international organization with widely recognized expertise in this area, such as the OECD. Such an award could be based on an internationally recognized certification scheme for ethical companies. 

• Governments can foster collaboration between relevant government agencies, industry associations, and companies in their respective countries to collect and share best practices on how to use training for fighting corruption. Government agencies, business organizations and companies could also jointly develop practical guidance on using training to foster integrity along the supply chain in certain high-risk sectors. 

• For trainings to be successful in countries with a high risk of corruption, it may not be sufficient to talk about the societal benefits of compliance Instead, to change the mindset of individuals accustomed to corruption, it may be necessary to show them that it is in their best interest not to engage in acts of corruption, in addition to the obvious case of refraining from illegal acts. This can be done by confronting them with the fact that even though corruption may bring gains in the short run, risks are high in the long run. Showcasing the cost of corruption for doing business, e.g. in terms of cost, efficiency losses and a tilted playing field, can also be impactful in this regard. 

• When engaging with companies that do so far not have a training program in place to promote integrity, it is important to emphasize the business opportunities such training could create for them, or the risks related to their core business that it could help address. 

• The OECD should intensify its horizontal work across multiple workstreams, including public integrity, anti-corruption, education and other relevant areas. It can leverage its convening power to help share best practices and monitor progress across its network. BIAC stands ready to contribute to these efforts. • Governments or (international) non-profit organi- zations can make their training material publicly available so that it can be used other organizations, thereby avoiding the development of costly integrity and anti-bribery & corruption related training material