COST Action HIRAM

High Impact Research on Adherence and Morality

Integrity breaches, including acts such as corruption, conflicts of interest, nepotism, erode trust, waste resources and weaken democratic legitimacy. Despite dense compliance regimes, many systems still foster “tick-box morality” rather than real ethical practice. HIRAM builds a pan-European network to close this gap by combining behavioural, organisational and technological approaches to integrity.

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The Action connects scholars, public agencies, NGOs and private actors from 17 countries (28 participants) to co-design, test and scale practical tools: behaviour-by-design standards, serious-game training, behavioural audits, and open-data risk dashboards. Research coordination will produce comparable cross-country evidence, including a harmonised Behavioural Integrity Indicator Suite (BIIS) micro-dataset and codebook. Capacity-building includes Training Schools, Short-Term Scientific Missions and policy labs that translate findings into implementable guidance for administrations.

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HIRAM follows open-science and GDPR-compliant stewardship (FAIR repository, OSF preregistration) and embeds COST’s inclusiveness mission: strong participation from Inclusiveness Target Countries, clear roles for Young Researchers and Innovators, and monitored gender balance across governance, activities and outputs.

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By integrating insights from public administration, psychology, data science and law, the Action will move European integrity policy beyond rules-only compliance towards preventive, context-sensitive interventions. The result is a sustained community, open tools and datasets, and actionable design principles that public organisations can adopt to strengthen everyday integrity and public trust.