The grand challenge: Effective anti-corruption measures in projects

Funding Information: The authors would like to thank the University of Leeds, School of Civil Engineering for hosting the first author’s research visit, making this research possible. Additionally, the authors are grateful to the Finnish Foundation for Economic Education for the first author’s mobility grant (grant number: 160183 ) that enabled this research. An earlier draft of the article was presented in the EGOS 2019 conference in Edinburgh (Sub-theme 66: Temporality and Project-based Organizing), and the authors would like to thank everyone who provided comments during the conference, helping to develop the article. Lastly, the authors would like to thank Professor Miia Martinsuo and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback during the review process.A grand challenge in projects involves employing anti-corruption measures effectively for dealing with corruption. Existing research is scattered across a wide range of disciplines and thus understanding of the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures in projects remains obscure. Focusing on construction projects, which are the most studied and affected by corruption, we aim to establish what kinds of anti-corruption measures are effective, and how. We use design-oriented research synthesis to systematically study existing empirical evidence related to anti-corruption measures in construction projects, found in management journals across various disciplines. Our study shows that there is scarce empirical evidence documenting the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures in projects. Nevertheless, our findings show that compliance, managerial, probing, reactive, and regulatory measures can be effective. The two main mechanisms explaining how the different anti-corruption measures are effective are enhanced transparency of project operations and incentivised stakeholders. We conclude with a research agenda focused on project governance.Peer reviewe