Diseño de interacción

Business and other private actors may benefit from the current study in the following ways; first, my research on anti-corruption offers insights on current techniques and strategies compliance officers utilize to achieve their objective. This, on the one hand, offers inspiration to companies in the process of internationalization of their operation by sketching not only the expectations they need to fulfil in global settings but also the human and material resources such an endeavor requires. Likewise, companies and practitioners may find strategies on anti-corruption discussed in this study as guidance for establishing other compliance areas such as data protection, human rights, environmental protection, piracy and human trafficking. On the other hand, and to more experienced practitioners and companies, the current study shows also the limits of compliance and anti-corruption practices. It creates thus incentives for further improvement of current practices or improvisation for new ones. Indeed, companies with mature compliance systems explore their options with regards to utilizing technology to achieve similar or even better results.

Second, managers may find this study useful in understanding the work of compliance officers and

what are the merits and pitfalls of their approach. As discussed in the empirical contributions section, it is not always the case that people within an organization are aware of the work of their colleagues even more so in global companies which employ thousands in various locations around the world. A

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reader of the current dissertation may acquire a broader view of what compliance in general and anti- corruption in particular entails and how he or she can take advantage of the merits but also avoid or mitigate the pitfalls. Third, for institutional actors in the private sector such as business collective organizations, this study helps them to re-examine their policies and recommendations against the practices and reasoning anti-corruption is applied in practice. In doing so, this study mitigates to some extent the ‘one size fits all’ solution to anti-corruption by providing a more grounded and practical base for the review and revision of the recommended policies on anti-corruption. More concretely, this study may serve as feedback regarding the way anti-corruption is practiced based on broad international regulations by putting these to the test against a variety of factors such as cultural barriers, corporate strategy or the professional interests of compliance officers.

9.3.2 Policy makers and regulators

To policy makers such as governmental authorities and international organizations this study shows how compliance officers implement their regulations and guidance. By definition then the study can serve as a platform for improvements and further optimization by taking into consideration not just broad expectations and trends but also practicalities and details on how anti-corruption is practiced in MNCs. The study shows for example which areas and aspects of anti-corruption corporations are more likely to be implemented, how, and why. Understanding the difference between anti-corruption and compliance and what benefits and problems each concept serves and aims to address may be helpful in providing more detailed guidance and regulation. In other words and as mentioned above, the current study may again serve as feedback and in so doing rebalance the expectation that corporations can be solely responsible for anti-corruption.

Following the above, policy makers and practitioners will find this study interesting for its approach to public-private relationships as not necessarily contradictory but also as supplementary in practice. This derives from the focus of this study on compliance officers who merge public and private rules and transform them to everyday guidance for their colleagues. Having this as a starting point, regulators and policy makers, may be benefited from this study in two ways; first, based on the practical insights offered in this study from the work of compliance officers, regulators, may realize the merits of a more practice-centered approach when designing regulations. As mentioned above, humans matter in corruption and anti-corruption is something people in corporations do. In doing so

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the practical gap between abstract rules and their implementation may be lessened. Second, this study enables policy makers to realize the extent to which anti-corruption in practice fulfils its intended objective and what the unintended consequences of such a policy maybe. The way compliance officers for example narrow down anti-corruption to mere compliance in everyday corporate operation can be a resource for regulators and public authorities concerned with the performance and improvement of extant regulations.

Overall, this study can enhance the ability of relevant actors to see anti-corruption beyond a top- bottom approach where corporations are seen as both responsible for corruption and as a result also as sole responsible for curbing it. In this sense, this study offers an excellent resource for practitioners to understand the several ways anti-corruption can be practiced and the intended and unintended consequences produced by such implementation.