Corporate Corruption: A Review and an Agenda for Future Research
- 1 July 2020
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Academy of Management in Academy of Management Annals
- Vol. 14 (2), 935-968
- https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2018.0156
Abstract
Given its extremely negative impact on global society, it is not surprising that there is an extensive literature focused on understanding and reducing corruption. However, the existing academic work focuses largely on corruption in government. Yet, corporations play a key role in much of the corruption that occurs in society and are important contexts for corruption themselves; they are also very different from governments and, we argue, deserve focused study and the development of a coherent theory of corporate corruption. In this article, we define corporate corruption and argue that management researchers are uniquely positioned to contribute to the development of a theory of corporate corruption and to the development of solutions to prevent it. We then examine the current state of research on this important topic and propose a framework for organizing research on corporate corruption into four perspectives – corporate corruption as rational action, corporate corruption as institutionalized practice, corporate corruption as cultural norm, and corporate corruption as moral failure. We go on to propose a research agenda for management scholars in some traditional areas of management research to take this important but under-researched topic forward and also highlight some of the methodological challenges that management researchers face in conducting research in corporate corruption.Keywords
This publication has 130 references indexed in Scilit:
- Values Work: A Process Study of the Emergence and Performance of Organizational Values PracticesThe Academy of Management Journal, 2013
- Corporate Governance and Corruption: Ethical Dilemmas of Asian Business GroupsJournal of Business Ethics, 2011
- The Shareholder–Manager Relationship and Its Impact on the Likelihood of Firm BriberyJournal of Business Ethics, 2011
- Transparency to Reduce Corruption?Journal of Business Ethics, 2009
- Organizational Isomorphism and Corruption: An Empirical Research in RussiaJournal of Business Ethics, 2008
- Understanding Corruption in Organizations – Development and Empirical Assessment of an Action ModelJournal of Business Ethics, 2008
- The Duality of Crony Corruption in Economic Transition: Toward an Integrated FrameworkJournal of Business Ethics, 2008
- Institutional Pillars and Corruption at the Societal LevelJournal of Business Ethics, 2007
- CorruptionThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1993
- The theory of planned behaviorOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1991