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Drawing from institutional theory and organizational learning perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to examine how social norms of corruption in home countries and those in host localities influence firm bribery behavior. It also investigates factors that moderate the influence of these norms.

The study is based on survey data of foreign invested firms (FIFs) in Vietnam, conducted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry between 2010 and 2018 along with Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. The authors run ordinary least squares regressions to test the hypotheses.

The study provides evidence that social norms of corruption in both home countries and host localities influence firms’ bribery behavior, but their effects are moderated by different sets of factors. Specifically, the use of local leadership augments the impact of the host province’s corruption norms on the firm’s bribe payments. By contrast, the relationship between the home country’s corruption norms and a FIF’s bribe payment is weaker if local leadership is used, and stronger if the FIF’s home country belongs to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Repeated cross-sectional data do not allow us to genuinely keep track of the changing roles of home country and host province corruption norms over time. In addition, the use of perception measures for corruption norms is subject to potential biases.

As the hiring of local executives weakens the impact of the home country’s norms which are embedded in the MNCs’ general practices, a stronger learning measure and regular review of the headquarters’ policies and practices is needed to ensure the overseas branch’s compliance. For policymakers, it is critical to recognize that local corruption plays a role in shaping FIFs’ bribery behavior.

While the effect of social norms of corruption on firm bribery behavior has been recognized, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that examines the learning processes FIFs may take to make sense of and cope with these norms, and also the first one to specify factors that moderate the influence of these norms.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a new anti-corruption law approved by the Italian Parliament in November 2012 with Italian treaty obligations, the international evaluation reports on the Italian anti-corruption regime elaborated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Council of Europe, the best practice guidelines and other European models. The year 2012 has marked a turning point in Italian anti-corruption policy. In response to the low ranking that Italy has in all international anti-corruption indices, the critiques expressed in international reports on its anti-corruption regime, and the increasing pressure of public opinion, the Italian parliament approved the new anti-corruption law.

The Law was preceded by critiques in the mass media and has been labelled as a token act. To evaluate the effectiveness of the steps undertaken by the Italian Parliament, this paper compares the new law with Italian treaty obligations, the international evaluation reports on the Italian anti-corruption regime elaborated by the OECD and the Council of Europe, the best practice guidelines and other European models (i.e. the UK Bribery Act).

This comparison gives the author the opportunity not only to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the law but also to suggest efficient solutions that the Italian legislator could have adopted.

So far, this is the only analysis in English of the changes introduced in the Italian anti-corruption regime in 2012. Several international colleagues and practitioners have asked the author about the new regime and it was therefore deemed appropriate to address the issue in an academic article.

This chapter deals with the question of how anti-corruption norms can emerge in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes that actively suppress social dissent and protest. The chapter examines the capacity of Russian opposition movements to create a sustained anti-corruption discourse and to shape political governance. When it comes to addressing corruption through social action in the context of Russia, the situation does not often seem conducive to concerted opposition activity. Nevertheless, even though opposition movements repeatedly fail to impact political decision-making or elite practices, they are not exercises in futility. The chapter concludes that the anti-corruption discourse can be effectively utilized by the Russian opposition movements to unite its efforts and vocalize their demands in terms of democratic governance norms. Continually repressive governmental measures are creating dangerous public spaces, where massive and violent confrontations are increasingly likely to occur. As the opposition continues to find its voice, challenge elite corruption and vocalize its desires for democratic governance norms, the continuing demands for policies to be reflective of public interest (rather than interests of the powerful elites) will not abate. The anti-corruption discourse can play a powerful unifying role for the opposition given the endemic nature of corruption in today’s Russia.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the disclosure of information on the fight against corruption in the sustainability reports of Portuguese companies.

Anti-corruption disclosure in the sustainability reports for 2009 of Portuguese firms, published on the website of the Portugal’s Business Council for Sustainability Development, is analysed. Three hypotheses are tested about associations between such disclosure and firm-specific variables.

Companies with a high visibility in terms of risk of corruption (companies in sectors with higher risk and government-owned companies) and companies that engage in association with the United Nations Global Compact seem to exhibit greater concern to improve the corporate image through disclosure.

There may be content analysis issues associated with subjectivity in the coding process and the use of a limited content analysis method.

This paper adds to the scarce research on the fight against corruption in corporate social responsibility and the reporting thereof by providing new empirical data.

The lack of transparency contributes to the growing corruption problem in various spheres of society. This paper aims to analyse the sustainability report disclosures published by Czech companies in 2021 and registered by the Association of Social Sustainability of the Czech Republic.

Based on three hypotheses, the relationships between the level of disclosed anti-corruption information and selected variables related to the corporate environment are tested using content analysis and the Mann–Whitney test.

This paper reveals that Czech firms provide more information if they operate in a higher-risk environment (energy, materials and financial services) or are state-owned (or with a state ownership stake). It also reveals that companies participating in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (UN Global Compact and Global Reporting Initiative) increase their credibility and social responsibility with more disclosed information.

A limitation of this paper is the smaller number of selected companies matching the chosen criteria. In addition, a certain degree of subjectivity is likely to have manifested in the process of coding the reports and in the use of the content analysis method.

The paper contributes to research that addresses the fight against corruption and CSR issues with a specific study in a small, Central European country and provides new empirical data on the anti-corruption fight problem.

This paper aims to investigate the factors affecting local government officials’ susceptibility to corrupt behavior among Indonesian local government officials.

This study uses a self-report survey and collected 449 questionnaires from 65 village government districts in Central Java province, Indonesia. This study uses a simple and partial correlation to measure the relationship between the susceptibility to corrupt behavior and the independent variables. Binary logistic regression was used to investigate which independent variables were best to explain the local government officials’ susceptibility to corrupt behavior.

The results show that the factors that best explain corrupt behavior’s susceptibility are the officials’ moral conviction to refrain from corrupt behavior, the perceived opportunity of corruption and the perceived benefit of engaging in such behavior. Further, this study finds an appealing crossover interaction between the perceived cost and social norms on corrupt behavior, such that when officials perceive the cost of engaging in corrupt behavior as low, they will rely more on social norms to decide whether to commit corrupt behavior.

This study provides actionable information for policy formulation. In particular, this study indicates that improvement of internal control can deter corrupt behavior. In addition, the findings of this study also suggest that changing the way we convey the message about corruption might be a promising intervention to mitigate corrupt behavior among government officials. More specifically, a more persuasive-positive-tone message that emphasizes the benefit of not engaging in corrupt behavior or that most people are against corruption can deter corrupt behavior.

The present study provides empirical evidence on the determinants of local government officials’ corrupt behavior from Indonesia’s perspective, which is currently limited.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the analysis of corruption must distinguish between corruption in organizations where this kind of behaviour is widespread and corruption in organizations where it is rare, and must also distinguish between corruption as the outcome of an economic cost-benefit analysis and corruption induced by social-psychological factors.

This is a conceptual paper.

In order to be effective in combating corruption, a fit is needed with the main determinants of corrupt behaviour: first, at the individual level in which either personal morality, social or economic considerations are at stake; second, at the organizational level in which social-psychological factors might be determinative; and third, at the contextual level in which economic prosperity, the nature of the political system and cultural features are important.

Especially in systems where corruption is widespread, policymakers could benefit from theories in social psychology to combat corruption.

To see corruption as the result of an individual cost-benefit analysis or as a lack of morality often misses the point in cases of widespread corruption.

The paper points at the added value of social psychology approach to corruption as compared to the approaches at present dominant in public administration.

Foreign whistleblowers are foreign citizens who help national enforcement authorities to sanction both foreign-based corporations and home-based corporations that engage in economic crime. This paper aims to investigate the expansion of US law in the area of transnational economic crime by discussing the case of foreign whistleblowers.

This paper has been developed from a literature review carried out as part of a wider study into policing international bribery.

This paper shows that extraterritorial application of US whistleblowing laws is part of a broad trend associated with extraterritorial enforcement of US anti-corruption statutes such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The extraterritorial reach of the FCPA and other statutes allowed the USA to become the leader in sanctioning US corporations as well as non-US corporations for economic crime. In effect, some US enforcement practices have become the standard that has influenced law and law enforcement in other countries as well as internal compliance of corporations.

In spite of the profound impact foreign whistleblowing has on the effectiveness of national anti-corruption enforcement, this topic has been largely neglected by academic research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to provide an overview of the role of foreign whistleblowers and the significant impact foreign whistleblowing has for legal reform in European countries and internal compliance of corporations in Europe and beyond.

Purpose – The paper addresses the MNCs’ sensitivity to corruption which varies across economic sectors depending on the interaction between sectoral characteristics and home-country formal institutions’ strength.

Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical framework is proposed based on the economic sector and host-country's institutional factors. The framework is empirically tested using 245 cross-border FDI valuations. Given that the energy sector is representative of high levels of industry concentration and government involvement – the sectoral characteristics considered to be moderating the relationship between corruption and FDI – the focus of the paper is on the energy sector. The study also tests the moderating effect of corruption distance.

Findings – The results indicate a lack of evidence that MNCs are deterred by corruption when investing in the energy sector of emerging and developing economies.

Research limitations/implications – The study provides a starting-point for further research of how economic sector characteristics can moderate the relationship between corruption and FDI. A key practical implication is that international anti-corruption measures are likely to be insufficient for some economic sectors.

Originality/value – The paper has proven to be of interest to the US State Department for studying the effectiveness of the international foreign bribery laws, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The framework can assist in identifying economic sectors likely to be resistant to comply with the foreign bribery laws when conditions of weak host-country formal institutions are present. The study challenges and complements the prevailing theory that host-country corruption has a negative effect on inward FDI.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the various anti-corruption strategies used to fight economic and financial crimes in both the public and private sectors in Iran.

This paper relied essentially on a secondary source of information. Materials used were collected in an eclectic manner from published outlets such as journal publications, books, online sources and newspaper reports. Also, official documents and statutes were also used. This study’s scope is limited to issues and analysis relating to measures adopted to combat corruption in Iran.

The legal and institutional frameworks analysed indicated that Iran has a robust anti-corruption scheme. However, there is no adequate measure available to gauge the effectiveness of these measures.

The paper concludes that conventional anti-corruption methods are not enough to fight corruption in this present time, thus, the implementation of whistle-blower policy and allowing freedom of operation of the civil society organisations and media would assist in the fight against corruption in Iran.

The paper provides the legal and institutional anti-corruption frameworks in Iran. It explores the three major approaches or methods of combating corruption and other corrupt practices in Iran.