Organizational Communication as A Driver of Anti-Money- Laundering Risk Culture in African Commercial Banks: A Conceptual Framework
Abstract
Anti-money-laundering programs in commercial banks are frequently described in terms of systems, controls, and technology, yet recurrent compliance failures suggest that the determinative variable is often cultural rather than procedural. This paper develops a conceptual framework positioning organizational communication not as a passive conduit for compliance rules but as a constitutive driver of the risk culture that determines whether those rules are enacted, ignored, or quietly subverted. The framework specifies three communication mechanisms: the architecture and quality of internal communication channels, the consistency of tone from the top, and the integrity of whistleblowing and voice systems. It argues that these mechanisms shape risk culture indirectly, working through two mediating states, psychological safety and organizational silence, and that their effects are conditioned by features common to African banking environments, including high power distance, relationship-centred commercial norms, heterogeneous and unevenly enforced regulation, concentrated ownership, and exposure to correspondent-banking de-risking. Drawing on social learning theory, organizational silence theory, the information-flow typology of organizational cultures, and high-reliability organizing, the framework explains why technically adequate programs fail when the communicative substrate is weak, and why the same controls perform differently across otherwise comparable institutions. The paper offers a measurement logic for each component, specifies boundary conditions, and contrasts the framework with control-centred and maturity-model approaches that dominate practitioner guidance. The central claim is that risk culture is produced in the daily flow of information about money-laundering risk, that this flow is governed by who may speak, who is heard, and what leaders reward, and that interventions ignoring these dynamics will continue to yield compliant documentation alongside non-compliant behaviour. Implications for bank leadership, supervisors, and future empirical testing are developed.
Keywords
financial crime compliance; ethical leadership; organizational silence; psychological safety; speak-up culture; institutional isomorphism; emerging-market banking; sub-Saharan Africa
References
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