Our Institute

Our institute has gathered administrative experts, jurists, and social scientists for the interdisciplinary advancement of the practice of corruption prevention. This interdisciplinary approach is of particular importance in the consulting services that we provide to our clients as it allows us to develop flexible offers and solutions tailored to their specific needs. From short presentations on specific subjects, through training of executive staff, to practical implementation of prevention measures, we offer our clients what they need to professionally prepare their business or public authority to withstand corruption. We also provide training programs for anti-corruption or integrity officers and conduct risk or vulnerability analyses for entire organizational units.

The Institute for Corruption Prevention’s staff are all professors at institutions of higher education who are capable of giving a sophisticated presentation on the current state of research, as well as practitioners who have years of experience in advising and supporting businesses and public authorities.

Of great importance to us is the exchange of experience between investigating authorities, (public) employers, businesses, anti-corruption officers, compliance managers, and researchers. For this reason, we usually conduct an annual conference on the subject.

We devote special attention to collaboration with East European countries. Corruption does not stop at national borders, and many businesses complain of such practices – both in Germany and other European countries.

Among our clients we count all levels of government, ranging from municipalities, districts, public agencies, to ministries, as well as large companies in Germany and abroad.

Our Concept

Synergy

At our institute, training, consulting, and research are not separate areas of work. They benefit from one another. The members of our institute have years of experience in research, consulting, and training. This allows us to provide our clients with services informed by the current state of research. Whenever new issues emerge that have yet to be explored, we pursue them.

Interdisciplinarity

No one knows everything, but collectively we can provide many answers. Each member of the institute is a proven expert in his or her field. Whenever the individual reaches his or her limits, interdisciplinary exchange with others ensures success.

At our institute, we see the connections between corruption and data manipulation, between corruption and other criminal offenses such as embezzlement, but also between corruption and organization.

Our Approach

To prevent corruption, the same set of organizational instruments is always recommended. Among these are the multiple-person rule (i.e., mutual control among colleagues) and the rotation principle (i.e., the regular replacement of personnel in at-risk positions).

All theoretical disputes notwithstanding, common corruption prevention practice seems to rely primarily on random checks or personal relationships of trust between superiors and their staff. Most emphasis, however, is placed on formal bodies of rules, which can in fact be in constant conflict with the reality of administrative practice and, for this reason, may be of rather little significance to corruption prevention.

However, prevention policies of a purely organizational nature or that rely on personal relationships of trust and random checks fail to live up to the challenges of modern forms of corruption. We therefore propose taking a closer look at the foundations of corruptive relationships from a social science perspective and then at the specific workplace. Our approach is to conduct a vulnerability analysis for every single workplace [potentially] at risk, because general prevention measures, some of which tend to lack much binding force, have become increasingly ineffective.