ABSTRACT
Recent corporate scandals in the United States and elsewhere have focused managerial and scholarly attention on corruption and other unethical behaviors by management practitioners and government officials. The 2003 Parmalat scandal in Italy confirms that major corporate scandals are not confined to the United States. One possible source of more non-U.S. scandals is corporate governance reform reports issued by several key stock exchanges outside the United States during the late 1990s that tried to increase “fiduciary responsibility,” that is to say profit performance The vital question is how to improve control of corruption and other unethical actions. Improved control can occur indirectly through voluntary or mandatory strengthening of corporate governance practices and/or directly through strengthening of governmental regulation of corruption and unethical behaviors. This chapter suggests some principles and practices for improved control of corruption and more broadly unethical behavior by management practitioners and government officials. The chapter examines the theoretical and practical relationships between recent multilateral anti-corruption accords promoted by the United States and three examples of U.S. domestic anti-corruption reform statutes. Inter-national cooperation requires national legislation and enforcement by 136many countries to be effective. U.S. domestic reform efforts provide possible models for national legislation and enforcement elsewhere. These models may apply more broadly than to corruption and unethical behavior (Neff, 1990).
