Systemic Imbalances in Integrity Management Systems: A Meso‐Level Framework From Four Corruption Scandals
2026-09-09
Integrity management systems (IMSs) are increasingly promoted to embed ethical conduct, mitigate corruption risks, and strengthen organizational accountability. Yet empirical evidence on their effectiveness remains sparse and contradictory, offering little insight into how these systems operate in practice and why they often fail in heavily formalized organizational settings. This paper addresses that gap by developing a meso‐level framework for diagnosing systemic imbalances in IMSs. Drawing on systems theory and management control literature, we conceptualize IMSs as an integrity management package structured through four levers: belief, boundary, diagnostic, and interactive systems of control. We deploy this framework through an explanatory, multi‐case design spanning four major corruption scandals in infrastructure, defense, healthcare, and banking in the UK, Italy, Greece, and the Nordic–Baltic region, drawing on a triangulated dataset built through systematic web scraping. The cross‐case analysis shows that integrity failures are not explained simply by the absence of formal controls, but by recurring imbalances among control levers. Organizations tend to privilege boundary and diagnostic systems, such as rules, procedures, monitoring, and performance metrics, while under‐investing in belief and interactive systems that should enable ethical culture, dialogue, challenge, and learning. We theorize this imbalance as a compliance façade: formally robust but weakly embedded in organizational practice. The paper thereby reframes the compliance versus values debate in ethics scholarship, offering the first empirically grounded, cross‐sectoral model of how integrity is embedded, sustained, and undermined in organizations, with implications for redesigning IMSs across public, private, and hybrid settings.