However, transparency may also its downside when it is only partially applied. Although corruption is more likely to be detected in a more transparent organization, as inevitable side effect, potential corruptors receive better information about the identities of key decision-makers; thereby enhance incentives to establish “connections” for corruption.

Mehmet (2001) presents a theoretical model with explicit links between transparency, incentives to build connections and the use of connections for corruption. If this “connections effect” is important and dominates the effect on the detection probability, corruption may actually increase when the organization becomes (locally) more transparent. For sufficiently large improvements in transparency the detection effect dominates the connections effect and then more transparency reduces corruption.