Institutional_Integrity_Modules_Summary.pdf

International Maritime Security Short Course

BLOCK 3: Institutional Integrity and Strengthening the Professional Force The first responsibility of every sovereign state is ensuring the integrity of government institutions.

Nations that do not jeopardize public support and can become a destabilizing threat to peace and security both domestically and regionally. Recognizing how important this is to maritime security, we will examine components necessary to building, retrieving and reinforcing an infrastructure of integrity in defense and security institutions within the maritime environment and the relationships between these in dynamic environments.

Specifically, this block of the short course is designed to review the foundations of institutional integrity, mechanisms that help to strengthen it, and leadership skills that can make it resilient when compromised. Using a rapid assessment instrument for gauging the strength of institutional integrity within specific operational commands, we will conduct a risk analysis that can inform and guide choices regarding management tools available both to reinforce operational integrity and increase mission effectiveness.

In some respects, building, retrieving and reinforcing institutional integrity is like a journey. In any journey you need to know where you are, where you want to go, what you need to get there and how to know when you’ve arrived. With respect to building institutional integrity, providing these answers is the ultimate purpose of this block of the course.

Foundations: Ethics and Public Policy

Part One: Personal Choices and Public Ethics – Stimulating Moral Imaginations

All security institutions draw upon and amplify the skills, beliefs, commitment and leadership qualities of individuals. Accordingly, it is worth spending some time examining how people form ethical values;

in what way(s) they form attachments to others; how shared beliefs and commitments might be used to build institutional integrity; and to what extent these can be measured. Accordingly, we will make a rapid historical survey of moral anthropology, e.g. the foundations of ethics and concepts of justice, as these have been used to inform public policies affecting institutional integrity.

Part Two: Game Theory, Social Contracts and Institutional Integrity

Every defense and security institution is a subset of the larger community and like that larger community, its efficiency and effectiveness usually reflects the level and degree of “buy-in” between its members. Using insights from British economist and mathematician Kenneth Binmore, we will discuss the relationship between stability, efficiency and fairness as principle features of all social contracts. The reason is simply this: building institutional integrity is not about making “good” people;

it is about (1) examining the motivations for and effects of people’s decisions upon the institutions to which they belong, and (2) determining how we might use this knowledge to strengthen integrity in specialized institutions

Geometric Integrity

Part One: Personnel Integrity, Transparency and Accountability

In this section we will examine a model using NATO’s three criteria for institutional integrity in defense establishments: personnel integrity, transparency and accountability.

• Personnel integrity is defined by behaviors and actions consistent with a set of moral or ethical principles and standards embraced by individuals as well as institutions creating a barrier to corruption.

• Transparency refers to open accessibility of accurate information in a timely manner and is a characteristic of governments, companies, organizations and individuals of being open in the clear disclosure of appropriate information, rules, plans, processes and actions.

• Accountability is the concept that individuals, agencies and organizations are held responsible for executing their powers properly.

Part Two: Challenges in Institutional Integrity

When any one of the three critical components of institutional integrity is too weak or excessively challenged it can compromise institutional integrity and create operational vulnerabilities. But there are ways to shift points of emphasis within the model to take advantage of the dynamic variables available for capitalizing upon strengths while minimizing weaknesses. Specific examples will be used to highlight both risks and solutions.

In Class Exercise: We will use a rapid web-based assessment instrument in class to develop a “snap-shot” of actual conditions within participant’s organizations and apply what we have been discussing in an interpretive exercise to chart both risks and opportunities.

Service, Solicitude and Sovereignty

A very significant percentage corruption reflects occasions of opportunity. These are bribes or gratuities demanded or offered merely because the occasion presented itself; but for the opportunity, they would not occur. In defense and security institutions also involved in regulatory functions, such as border enforcement, over time this low-level misconduct can become as corrosive of the infrastructure of integrity as more significant corruption. Like a quiet but malignant cancer, it can infect entire institutions, eating away at operational integrity until it is so significantly compromised it collapses entirely. Beyond the mission compromise this represents, it forfeits the respect and support of citizens, other government offices and ministries, and international partners.

In Module Three we consider a model that can significantly improve effectiveness and efficiency while at the same time reinforcing institutional integrity. It has been used successfully in strong as well as in developing nations and incorporates principles of systems analysis and effects-based management, as shall be explained.