Economic recession took effect in Malaysia in late 1984 and continued through 1985 and 1986. During this period, there was a sudden surge in economic crime. Its scale has Increased over recent years. When economic crime is on the increase, the costs to society are also increasing, not only in terms of money and property stolen by perpetrators, but also in terms of loss of confidence and respect by the public at large in our government. With the present rapid growth in business and commercial activities, economic crime has found a fertile ground. Economic crime is a 'growth industry'. Unless we study it, understand it, and develop tools to deal with it effectively, we may be witnessing only the beginning of a phenomenon that could undermine the social, economic and political stability of the country. Today's cost of economic crime in Malaysia is estimated to be more than $200 million a year. It victimises thousands of individuals. It undermines the very legitimacy of our institutions. With continued innovation in information and communications technologies, the dimensions of the problem expand; yet our legal and business systems cannot cope with what is happening today. In the opinion of the researcher, there can be little doubt that economic crime will continue to rob society as it has In the past. Despite its current scale, there has not been a study of economic crime In Malaysia. The reason is obvious; for a researcher to embark on a study in this particular area of criminal activity, there would need to be the accessibility to the highly sensitive data on such activities (while recognising that not all the crimes are detected). Many of the agencies charged with Investigation and prosecution of these non-traditional crimes, quite correctly, do not make their detailed findings public. Aggregated data, which are made available to the public, are often not sufficiently specific for research purposes. The secrecy of the Government agencies Is necessary in order for them to function effectively as law enforcement Instruments. Sutherland [1977, page 38] noted that explanations for crime could not be found in poverty alone; criminality is a much more complex phenomenon. For example, he noted that poverty Is no explanation for crimes of the rich and the professional segments of the society. It is noted by this researcher in his three years experience as the Head of Banking and Financial Investigations at the special unit of the Commercial Crime Department, Police Headquarters, Kuala Lumpur, that the problems In dealing with economic crimes could not be addressed in the same manner as In traditional crime. Studies were needed to explain and understand these crimes. From this knowledge base, there would be a better opportunity to formulate policy strategies to address the problems. This research, even though focussing in Malaysia, is meant to act as a springboard for future research within the researcher's organisation, the Royal Police Force of Malaysia, and also at least be useful for new Developing Countries which may have to encounter a similar economic crime phenomenon. The study also examines the major economic institutions in Malaysia such as cooperatives, insurance and stock-exchange and concludes that some of the main causes of economic crime are problems of management. They are: * poor quality and laxity of discipline and management; * financial and technical mismanagement in the operation of companies; * breaches of the law; * poor documentation and record keeping practices; * inadequate and ineffective control system. The findings of the research survey shows that the causes of economic crime in Malaysia are consistent with situational, opportunity and personal pressures. Economic crime in Malaysia is largely due to people who are in position of trust, who have abused their powers in a situation of poor accounting practices. Economic crime could possibly be prevented by improving the system of auditing, improving the management information system and improving the management environment.

M.A. / Fraud and corruption as well as other forms of organizational wrongdoing has become a serious problem in South Africa. If employees become aware of the fact that a superior is involved in some form of wrongdoing they find themselves in a dilemma. If they report the transgression without being authorized to do so, they face the possibility of being victimized within the organization. The unauthorized disclosure of information about organizational wrongdoing by an employee has become known as whistleblowing. Whistleblowing could have positive consequences for the organization, as it provides the possibility that organizational misconduct could be exposed and dealt with. However, the unauthorized nature of the exposure often results in the organization focussing its attention on the messenger rather than the message. As a consequence the whistleblower is often ostracized until he or she leaves the organization voluntarily or is forced out, while the misconduct is ignored or even covered up in a misguided attempt to protect the organization’s reputation. The act of whistleblowing therefore often has a very detrimental effect on the individual whistleblower’s career, family relationships and self-image. Apart from the possible negative consequences faced by the individual when engaging in whistleblowing, the organization within which the whistleblowing occurs can also be negatively affected. Individual employees are their best form of detection when something is wrong within the organization. However, if the whistleblower is victimized and leaves the organization, it means that the organization loses a valuable employee and that the misconduct will continue. Furthermore, in future when employees become aware of some form of dishonesty they will tend to turn a blind eye rather than report the important information. Financial institutions and in particular banks, are particularly vulnerable to the possibility of fraud and corruption or other forms of misconduct occurring. Rather than focussing on the experiences of the whistleblower, this study investigated the views of managers at a commercial bank with regard to the nature and ways of managing whistleblowing in the organization. Senior managers were interviewed during the course of this study and three issues came to the fore. Firstly, the managers generally showed very little understanding with regard to the nature and implications of whistleblowing for the organization. Secondly, the organizational culture seems to concentrate mainly on creating an environment that is conducive to protecting the stakeholders’ interests than allowing reporting of wrongdoing to take place. Thirdly, there does not seem to be any effective mechanisms in place that could facilitate the disclosure of organizational misconduct in such a manner that it would result in a beneficial outcome for both the individual disclosing the information and the organization. The study concludes by making some recommendations with regard to ways in which a culture of ethics can be created in an organization. This would entail instituting mechanisms of confidential reporting, which would promote the authorized disclosure of organizational misconduct and therefore pre-empt the necessity of blowing the whistle. / Prof. J.M. Uys

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Public Development and Management Johannesburg, 2017 / There is a general outcry among stakeholders that, despite the many efforts on the part of the South African government in the forms of laws and strategies to promote ethical behaviour and eradicate corruption, the situation in local government continues to deteriorate. Although a number of studies have been conducted on the problems of corruption and unethical conduct in municipalities, not much has been done to investigate the effectiveness of ethics management in local government. Following a qualitative and quantitative paradigm, this study sought to investigate the state of ethics management at Rustenburg Local Municipality by assessing the presence and effectiveness of ethics management using the pillars of the integrity management framework. The study revealed that, although the municipality has a code of conduct and policies in place, these are not fully implemented and enforced, and there are no development processes and structures in place. In brief, ethics management at the municipality is non-existent. The report presents a number of observations which include a call for the shift from the rule-based towards the value-based approach in the management of ethics. It argues that, in order to make the required impact, local government institutions must adopt a strategy that combines the rule-based and value-based approaches to the management of ethics. This would ensure that ethics are institutionalised and are no longer treated as taboos in the workplace. / MT 2017

I investigate whether and how auditors address the potential risk of CEO incentive pay and CEO incentives from their equity portfolio as an incentive to commit fraud through their pricing decisions. Using an OLS regression model I find that auditors price CEO incentive pay in the post SOX period. Also, auditors price CEOs' non-linear incentives from their holdings of stock options as a fraud risk factor but do not price linear incentives from CEO holding of stock and restricted stock. Furthermore, auditors consider CEO incentives to manipulate firm performance due to the vested portion of option holdings as a fraud risk factor which is priced, and not the unvested portion of this portfolio. Furthermore, I find evidence to suggest that auditors price CEO opportunity to commit fraud, as well as CEO rationalizing the act of committing fraud, therefore concluding that auditors price all components of the fraud triangle. / by Yezen H. Kannan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

The enactment of the FCPA and the formation of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention created two historical events for theoretical analysis: because the FCPA unprecedentedly criminalized transnational bribery in 1977, its wisdom was initially questioned. Then, since the Convention endorsed the FCPA approach in 1997, academic focus was shifted to the practical effect of the Convention in controlling transnational bribery-—which is also the topic of this study. / This study develops argument based on an awareness of the limitation of a popular methodology in current literature-—the problem-solving paradigm. This paradigm is grounded in the rational-choice tradition, assumes signatories’ enforcement of the Convention as resulting from their self-serving purposes, labels the current level of Convention enforcement as “ineffective-enforcement”, and borrows solutions from conventional collective action theories to prescribe. This paradigm well explains why most signatories have brought few enforcement actions. Yet its excessive commitment to orthodoxies prevents scholars from grasping the uniqueness of the collaboration and prescribing successful solutions. Besides, it avoids explaining why some signatories have indeed enforced the Convention. A historical approach that draws causality from a process’s historicity is thus proposed as a supplementary methodology. / This study analyzes signatories’ compliance with the Convention by four steps: First, it explains a seemingly outdated but unexplained question—the dynamic of the institutionalization of the OECD anti-bribery collaboration, and finds that the central institutions did not result from signatories’ trading off conflicting values and interests, but from their attempts to coordinate demands of different stakeholders within given institutional contexts. / Second, this study explains why most signatories tend to defect rather than faithfully enforce the Convention, following the logic of the problem-solving paradigm: destabilizing factors in the indigenous collaboration encourage defection in the first place, and the monitoring program in the collaboration fails to resolve these destabilizing factors in the second place. More fundamentally, the surreptitious nature of transnational bribery fails central monitoring—a conventional effective solution to collective action problems. / This study then formulates a three-level solution model to address the monitoring problem: first, this model encourages private sector actors to report clues of transnational bribery so as to resolve the lack of first-hand information. Second, given the weakness of private sector actors in collecting solid evidence, this model stresses the dominant role of national prosecutors in the home country of bribe-paying companies to conduct in-depth investigations. Third, given that prosecutors may shirk duty because of protectionism, this model suggests to authorize prosecutors in the home country of victimized competitors the right to monitor the investigation process. / Forth, this study takes the US as an example to analyze the positive side of Convention enforcement. Given that FCPA enforcement is embodied in the SEC and the DOJ’s independent performance of their own statutory duties, this study reviews variation in the SEC and the DOJ’s enforcement efforts in past decades, and finds that this variation results from their adherence to their own missions in an evolving institutional context—which gradually incorporates their duties of enforcing the FCPA into their central missions. / 美国的《反海外贿赂法》和世界经合组织的《关于反对在国际商务活动中贿赂外国公务人员行为的公约》（《公约》）为学界提供了两个重要课题：《反海外贿赂法》开创性地将跨国商业贿赂规定为犯罪，其合理性曾饱受质疑；《公约》将《反海外贿赂法》的精神推广到其他国家后，学界进而关注其执行效果，并提供政策建言—此亦是本文的论题。 / 本文的论述建立在对学界的“问题导向型”研究范式批判继承的基础之上：该范式植根理性主义传统，假定国家决策的自利属性，将《公约》的执行现状拟制为“非有效执行”，并试图从传统集体行动理论中借鉴对策。该范式阐释了为何多数缔约国执行《公约》乏力。然而其过于依赖传统理论，忽略《公约》项下集体行动的独特性，难以找准对策。同时该范式完全回避解释少数缔约国认真履约的现实。因此，本文在肯定该范式的理论贡献之上建议采用历史分析方法，从《公约》执行实践中总结经验，以为补充。 / 本文首先分析了《公约》项下反贿赂集体行动的制度化进程，发现《反海外贿赂法》和《公约》等核心制度的产生并非源自各缔约国对利益和价值的权衡取舍，而是立法者在既定的社会制度和价值体系中协调各主体的利益关切的必然选择。随后，本文立足于 “问题导向型”范式的理论成果，阐释了大部分缔约国不执行《公约》的原因：反贿赂集体行动存在着诸多结构性不安定因素，而《公约》项下的监督体制未能克服相关问题。《公约》项下集体行动问题需要系统的、三层次的应对模式：鼓励私人主体提供贿赂案件的原始线索；将私人主体获取原始线索的优势和公权力搜集确凿证据的优势整合；赋予受损的竞争者的母国对调查取证的参与权，促成缔约国相互监督。最后本文分析了美国日益激进的战略，发现其对《反海外贿赂法》的执行力度随着执法部门的执法义务和本部门中心任务的逐渐兼容而得以加强，其轨迹不同于理性主义对国家行为逻辑的预测。美国的激进战略客观上造就了国际规制竞争，为提高公约执行水平提供了新路径。 / Liu, Lianlian. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 337-355). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 15, September, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.

Thesis (M.A. (Public Administration)) --University of Limpopo, 2007 / The Maphata Village in Ward 26, under the jurisdiction of Greater Giyani Local Municipality in Mopani District- Limpopo Province, was allocated 70 seventy (70) Reconstruction and Development Programme houses during the 2001/2002 and 2005/2006 Financial Years respectively. During the process, there were allegations from members of the community that there were corrupt practices with regard to the allocation of the Reconstruction and Development Programme houses as more that fifty (51) beneficiaries were relatives of the Ward Councillor. Since there is lack of research that looked at corruption on the allocation of Reconstruction and Development Programme houses, the present study aimed to assess the level of beneficiaries’ knowledge on corrupt practices (level of understanding) so that they can be encouraged to blow a whistle on corruption within their environment; to assess the beneficiaries’ level of understanding regarding corruption and their awareness of corrupt practices, evaluate Reconstruction and Development Programme houses Allocation Strategy; probe the nature and extent of corruption on Reconstruction and Development Programme houses; and provide possible mechanisms against the problem of corruption. The study was critical and important as provision of houses is one of the basic needs to the poor community and, as such, the Limpopo Province cannot afford to neglect this responsibility. The Parliament of the Republic of South Africa recognises amongst others, that: • housing as an adequate shelter, fulfils a basic human need; • housing is both a product and process; • housing is a key sector of the national economy; and • housing is vital to the socio-economic well-being of the nation. (iii) The findings of the study and the recommendations if implemented will improve the status of the corruption of the allocation of RDP houses to the vulnerable groups. (iv)

This paper seeks to present the moral and ethical frameworks in which to consider the effect of bribing on business and the great community; confront the cultural differences that lie between American businesses and its potential interest abroad, as well as the growing international move to implementation similar to that of the FCPA; analyze prior anti-bribery legislation and the historical events that prompted the need for a policy like the FCPA, discuss the basic elements of the policy’s two pronged approach of anti-bribery and disclosure regulation; examine several cases in the enforcement of the FCPA on American businesses; and consider the advantages and disadvantages of the statute on the performance of American businesses as a factor of total international exports.

Les États ont depuis de nombreuses années incriminé la corruption des agents publics nationaux. La crise de l'énergie de 1973 et la fin de la guerre froide de 1989 ont néanmoins stimulé l'apparition d'une forme spécifique de corruption jusqu'alors passé sous silence par les textes juridiques : la corruption d'un agent public étranger. La lutte contre la corruption des agents publics étrangers a récemment connu un essor international normatif considérable notamment avec l'entrée en vigueur de plusieurs conventions internationales à visée régionale et universelle. La genèse de cette réaction internationale est avant tout d'inspiration étatsunienne. Promulgué aux États-Unis en 1977 dans le sillage de l'affaire du Watergate, le Foreign Corrupt Practices Act fut la première loi nationale incriminant la corruption d'un agent public étranger. Cette loi est progressivement devenue la matrice des textes internationaux ultérieurs. La lutte contre la corruption internationale doit faire face aux difficultés de mise en œuvre qui sont inhérentes à l'application des conventions internationales. Il est parfois estimé que ce dispositif juridique international n'est pas toujours d'une efficacité parfaite. Un premier niveau de recherche qui consiste à opérer une analyse des textes juridiques, conduira à étudier la dimension opératoire des dispositifs en vigueur. A la lumière des avis des praticiens contemporains de lutte contre la corruption, un second niveau d'analyse complétant le premier aura pour objectif final de formuler des propositions d'amélioration des mécanismes juridiques existants en droit international positif.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration