Bribery in the Workplace: A Field Experiment on the Threat of Making Group Behavior Visible.

This article examines whether reputational threat among coworkers can reduce bribery in organizations, focusing on a field experiment conducted in maternity wards of five Moroccan public hospitals. The study finds that revealing ward-level bribery incidence to healthcare workers, coupled with the threat of exposure to coworkers, leads to a significant reduction in bribery only in wards with high baseline bribery rates, while bribery remains unchanged in low baseline wards. Qualitative data suggest that both healthcare workers and hospital directors tolerate bribery only up to a certain "threshold," beyond which social and managerial pressures prompt behavior correction; these tolerance thresholds are independently developed and ward specific. The findings highlight the potential of leveraging group-based social accountability as a policy lever against workplace bribery, while also cautioning that such interventions may have limited or unintended effects in lower-incidence settings.