2016 Corruption Heat Map
Is it necessarily true that power [always] corrupts and absolute power [always] corrupts absolutely? There may be some exceptions, but it happens often enough so that any business that wants to avoid the destructive nature of corruption should address ambient corruption just as hospitals address bacteria and viruses. Ambient corruption will probably always exist, but with systematic effort in can largely be kept external to the business. This means vigilance in hiring, rigorous process/audit and judicial application of supportive technology. Even in highly corrupt cultures, ethical businesses can be sustainably profitable.
Successful businesses don’t pretend corruption does not exist. They don’t treat corruption euphemistically. Sustainably successful businesses recognise and assess ambient cultural corruption and take concrete steps to keep it external to the business. They do not allow external cultural corruption to become internalised, or even tolerated. Whether at corporate headquarters or in a peripheral branch or line of business. Unethical, corrupt behaviour never gets a pass as an “exception” even under special circumstances.
This 2016 Global Interactive Corruption Heat Map charts data for global levels of perceived corruption in 45 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Clicking the hyperlink will open a new tab. Depending on your internet speed it may take a few moments, hover over the coloured circles in the new tab to see the corruption perception index for each country. Lower numbers indicate less perceived corruption. No surprises, but scores range from single digits for the Nordics to triple digits for Russia and Mexico. Larger circles indicate more perceived corruption. The colours range from green for least corrupt, to yellow, orange and red for increasing corruption.
In alphabetical order the states are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Mexico, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Ordered from least to most corrupt, the mapped states are: Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Austria, United States, Ireland, Japan, Estonia, France, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Lithuania, Spain, Latvia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Malta, Korea, Slovak Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Montenegro, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Brazil, China, India, Macedonia, Mexico, and the Russian Federation.
We created this map with data gathered, vetted and collated by Transparency International (from their 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index). The data are an aggregate of multiple sources recording perceptions of business people and country experts regarding public sector corruption.
