Corruption, Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance

Corruption is an issue that affects developing and developed countries alike. Businesses are often seen as fueling the flames of corruption by engaging in corrupt practices in order to gain advantages over competitors in business deals. Since the mid-1990s the international community has been focusing on ways to increase business integrity by adopting conventions for ratification end effective implementation by Contracting States and soft law instruments for voluntary incorporation by businesses within their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies. The question however is whether these self-regulatory measures have made any noticeable impact on companies’ practices and policies in respect of corruption. This paper addresses this question through a survey of companies’ policies and practices as expressed in their CSR statements and responses to questionnaires of publicly listed companies as published by The Times (London) in the Industrials, Telecoms and Technology sectors