Fighting corruption: How binding commitments of business firms can help to activate the self-regulating forces of competitive markets

Corruption is a serious and complex challenge for modern societies. Fighting and preventing corruption thus requires constructive learning processes. In this paper, we systematically integrate a market ethics perspective with a business ethics perspective constitutive for the study of 'ordonomics'. In doing so, we argue that, first, companies have a(n) (common) interest in actively fighting corruption using collective forms of self-regulation and, second, we show what companies can do about it internally. We derive the first argument from a market ethics perspective that shows how companies suffer from a race to the bottom that results from corruption under market competition. The second argument is based on a business ethics perspective that shows how cartels of silence within companies can create significant obstacles for well-meaning top management to address the problem effectively.