Target 16.5: Substantially reduce corruption and bribery
Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Bribery of foreign officials is overwhelmingly a large-company phenomenon. The OECD's analysis of 427 concluded foreign bribery cases found companies with over 250 employees in 60 percent of cases and management or CEO knowledge or endorsement in 53 percent. Two thirds of cases fell in extractives, construction, transport and communications. Transparency International's anti-bribery guidance cites shareholder and investor confidence as a reason for companies to report on their programs. Corporate lobbying weakened one transparency rule, the SEC's Dodd-Frank Section 1504 extractive payments rule, which Congress repealed in 2017 after years of industry opposition and litigation. Owners can therefore address the supply side of bribery and a documented lobbying obstacle. But corruption in all its forms includes domestic public-sector and petty corruption driven by public officials that owners cannot reach. Owners remove a necessary obstacle on the supply side, and governments must act on the demand side.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- OECD Foreign Bribery Report: An Analysis of the Crime of Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, OECD, 2014-12-02
- OECD Foreign Bribery Report: An Analysis of the Crime of the Bribery of a Foreign Official, HFW, 2015-02-06
- 18. Reporting, Transparency International Anti-Bribery Guidance, 2025
- Extractive Industry Transparency Rule Subject to Long Battle, Poised to Meet a Quick End, Center for Global Development, 2017-02-06
2 campaigns on record
The proposal asked Elevance's board to commission an independent study on adopting a policy against corporate contributions to partisan 527 political organizations, after the company gave more than $9.7 million to the Republican Governors Association and $1.3 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association since 2010.
Result: Received about 8.7% support at the May 2026 annual meeting.
we found no documented change; Trillium described this first-year result as a basis for continued engagement.
Q2 2026 Shareholder Advocacy Impact Report, Trillium Asset Management
The CPA-Zicklin Index scores companies on whether they disclose political spending, how they set internal rules on political contributions, and whether the board oversees that spending.
Result: The 2022 edition was the first to cover the full Russell 1000; 78% of S&P 500 companies fully or partially disclosed political spending or restricted at least one type of spending, and the average S&P 500 score rose 3% year over year.
More than half of S&P 500 companies had board-level oversight of political spending by 2022, according to the source, reflecting a trend of rising disclosure scores over the decade the index has run (since 2012).
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.