This article is intended to spark discussion about how complexity thinking might help researchers and practitioners better understand and prevent corruption. Moral and ethical arguments can be problematic because individuals vary in their underlying values. Complex systems theory offers a less values-laden interpretation of the phenomenon, its mechanisms, and its solutions. We describe an emergent condition in organizing dynamics that exploits an externality of a larger system such that certain individuals or groups benefit at the expense of others in that larger system. They do this by creating a “value sink” that captures resources that would otherwise continue to circulate within the system. A value sink is “corrupt” when it is actively maintained by some who enforce conditions that either limit transparency or constrain the autonomy of others in violation of the rules of interaction within the larger system. It follows that institutionalized corruption is a dynamically stable cooperative regime that sustains a corrupt value sink.