Gift Giving and Corruption

“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Public Administration on 7 June 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01900692.2016.1177833” © 2017 Taylor & Francis. This author accepted manuscript is made available following 18 month embargo from date of publication (6 June 2016) in accordance with the publisher's copyright policy.When individuals exchange gifts, social bonds are strengthened and reciprocity is created. If the gift and the reciprocation both come from private resources, it is clearly a gift. If what is reciprocated after a gift is given comes from an organization, or is a government resource rather than from “one’s own pocket” then it is most likely a bribe. This study reviews the anthropological literature on gift giving and constructs a typology for examining the gift/bribe distinction in public administration. This classification helps distinguish analytically among different gift practices and clarify conceptual ambiguity of the terms gift and bribe

SCD1 Inhibition Causes Cancer Cell Death by Depleting Mono-Unsaturated Fatty Acids

Increased metabolism is a requirement for tumor cell proliferation. To understand the dependence of tumor cells on fatty acid metabolism, we evaluated various nodes of the fatty acid synthesis pathway. Using RNAi we have demonstrated that depletion of fatty-acid synthesis pathway enzymes SCD1, FASN, or ACC1 in HCT116 colon cancer cells results in cytotoxicity that is reversible by addition of exogenous fatty acids. This conditional phenotype is most pronounced when SCD1 is depleted. We used this fatty-acid rescue strategy to characterize several small-molecule inhibitors of fatty acid synthesis, including identification of TOFA as a potent SCD1 inhibitor, representing a previously undescribed activity for this compound. Reference FASN and ACC inhibitors show cytotoxicity that is less pronounced than that of TOFA, and fatty-acid rescue profiles consistent with their proposed enzyme targets. Two reference SCD1 inhibitors show low-nanomolar cytotoxicity that is offset by at least two orders of magnitude by exogenous oleate. One of these inhibitors slows growth of HCT116 xenograft tumors. Our data outline an effective strategy for interrogation of on-mechanism potency and pathway-node-specificity of fatty acid synthesis inhibitors, establish an unambiguous link between fatty acid synthesis and cancer cell survival, and point toward SCD1 as a key target in this pathway

Introduction to PAR Symposium of Understanding and Reducing Public Corruption

As public corruption continues to draw media attention as a global concern, and as one of the most pressing policy challenges to tackle, scholarly investigation into this subject has been relatively meager, especially in public administration and related fields. Due to the literature scarcity, several critical questions remain understudied and are thus poorly understood. For instance, although many countries have made great efforts to fight corruption, why did many of them fail? We argue that the success of anticorruption initiatives depends on a better understanding of the problem at all levels—national, organizational, and individual. The PAR symposium of Understanding and Reducing Public Corruption aims to advance research on public corruption to extend the knowledge base for a deeper understanding of this complex phenomenon.Yahong Zhang, David Jancsics, Adam Grayca

Existing and Promising Theoretical Approaches to Understanding ICTs Contribution to Anti-corruption Efforts

Two theories, often presented as bifurcated, dominate attempts to understand corruption in the social sciences: collective action and principal-agent. Both theories seek to ex-plain when and why corruption happens, as well as how it can be addressed. With the ICT4D field often criticized for being under-theorized, the following study explores which theories are drawn upon to understand ICTs as an anti-corruption tool in developing countries. Through a literature review of 20 years of IS and ICT4D research the study analyses 19 peer reviewed journal articles’ theoretical under-pinning together with methodology and theoretical contributions. The results find that even if a few studies declare some, often only cursory, theoretical underpinnings and influences, they in-fallibly fail to present a theoretically informed analytical framework detailing ICTs contribution to anti-corruption, or the lack thereof. Furthermore, with most of the papers containing no theoretical references, the field is still clearly struggling with theory. The article discusses the benefits with appropriating theory, such as principle-agent and collective action as well as more critical approaches to un-pack ICTs contribution to anti-corruption efforts</p