This episode's Democracy that Delivers podcast focuses on how individual entrepreneurs and policy professionals are using business integrity and compliance programs to deepen trade ties in North America. Michele Crymes, deputy director of CIPE’s Anti-Corruption & Governance Center (ACGC), sits with former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Tony Wayne, and Gabriela Blanco, an anti-corruption expert and specialist in corporate integrity, to discuss business integrity in Mexico’s private sector. Our guests share their perspectives on progress being made and challenges to creating a robust culture of business integrity and complianc in Mexico.

In 2024, the institutions and mechanisms of trade in North America are facing the potential for significant change. This year’s elections in both the United States and Mexico could lead to changes in the prevailing Untied States-Mexico-Canda Agreement. Regardless of the respective electoral outcomes, business will keep flowing between the three countries, and thus business integrity will remain a focus.

Drawing upon his tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Mr. Wayne discusses the impunity rate for crime in Mexico, how a lack of business integrity hurts entrepreneurs, and what is presently being done to create a stronger business environment. Ms. Blanco likewise integrates her years of corporate governance work to examine how CIPE programs work with international firms and Mexican entrepreneurs to try to deliver better outcomes for stakeholders.

On this week's episode, Alison Taylor, Clinical Associate Professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, joins CIPE’s Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, John Morrell, to discuss her new book, Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World. Professor Taylor, who also serves as the Executive Director of Ethical Systems, draws from her professional experience and academic research to explain why modern businesses care about anti-corruption practices, how she's seen ethical compliance change over time, and what the next era of corporate governance should look like.

Our contemporary business environment displays stark differences from those of the past decades. Ethical conduct is now increasingly seen as more than a legal risk around bribery and fraud, as a risk which can be resolved through compliance processes alone. Urgent ecological concerns, unpredictable politics, and heightened employee activism all present business leaders with fresh challenges. Professor Taylor explains that we must now move past entrenched legalistic approaches and into broader conversations about human behavior in organizations and how companies should best exist in their social contexts.

These new approaches follow the same collective action and sustainability models so often practiced by CIPE and our local partners. In her view, business interests have much to learn from anticorruption and development organizations on how to best operate in a world where transparency can be more important than profit. Listen as John and Alison exchange insights for our evolving world.

Description

Corruption in the shipping industry is a persistent challenge for fair trade across the world, estimated by our guests to cost the international economy billions of dollars each year. The Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) is a global business network of over 200 companies that, since 2011, has become a pre-eminent example of collective action to battle corruption.

On this week’s Democracy that Delivers podcast, CIPE Program Director for Anti-Corruption and Compliance Ekaterina Lysova sits with MACN Associate Director for Collective Action and Partnerships Martin Benderson and owner of QBIS Consulting Thomas Westergaard-Kabelmann. The guests discuss their new, groundbreaking study of the cost of maritime corruption to the shipping industry and society using the example of Nigeria. Martin and Thomas utilize unique data and an innovative methodology to assess both the direct and indirect or hidden costs of corruption in Nigeria’s ports and maritime sector over the period of 2019-2023. Their resulting assessment serves as a powerful case study for the wide-reaching implications of maritime corruption on low- and middle-income countries.

Listen to these experts discuss how they performed their research, what trends the study reveals, and how their approach can be utilized by other researchers and anti-corruption practitioners seeking to understand the true costs of corruption in various industries and economic sectors.

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