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This paper aims to raise awareness of the potential misuse of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) within the financial services industry and outline the potential negative impact this may have on society in certain developing countries.

This piece of research adopted a mix-method approach across three strands; an online line anonymous survey, consisting of 24 questions, face to face interviews with 10 anti-bribery and corruption compliance officers and three focus group, one in Hong Kong, India and Mexico.

The results of the research have evidenced that there is a lack of understanding of the methodology used to compile the CPI within the financial services industry and there is a potential adverse impact if misused.

A potential limitation was the fact that the survey was written in English yet was distributed to some countries where English was not the respondents’ first language. As such, it was accepted that there may have been context challenges or a misunderstanding of what the question asked.

By raising awareness of the methodology of the CPI and the advantages and disadvantages of its use, it will enable the financial service industry to better understand the implications of using such an index and the impacts of its misuse.

This research highlights that through the potential misuse and lack of understanding of the CPI by the financial services industry this may have an adverse financial, growth and development impact on societies in low ranked countries.

This paper draws on a sub-set of results from a wider piece of research that was undertaken for a Professional Doctorate. This research combined academic knowledge with practitioner research skills, providing an original contribution to knowledge surrounding corruption from a more targeted focal point, particularly with input from anti-bribery and corruption compliance officers in the financial service industry.

Citizens are demanding better performance from governments and they are increasingly aware of the costs of poor management and corruption. In view of scarce resources and the major transformations already underway in the global economy, identification and awareness of good governance and preventing corrupt practices have become key to ensuring structural reforms and critical investments necessary for encouraging, sustaining, and enhancing economic growth and competitiveness. Political corruption severely undermines government legitimacy and weakens the development of political, economic, social, and environmental structures.

The paper aims to reveal some uncertain correlations and presumptions about corruption.

The paper defines corruption as a social phenomenon. It presents two basic components of that phenomenon: unreasonable preferential treatment and abuse of power. The paper addresses the moral issue that is implied in any phenomenon of corruption. The author will use the Corruption Perception Index and the Bribe Payers Index of Transparency International as well as the International Country Risk Guide, in order to check to what extent some correlations or presumptions about corruption could be reliable, at least as hypotheses.

Uncertain correlations and presumptions about corruption actually create an effect of distorted interpretation. They could cause ideological biases that distort our perception of corruption in developing and developed countries.

The paper does not take into account the multiple expressions of gift‐giving practices around the world and the way such practices could be confused with corruption.

Being aware of our “presumptions” about corruption will help us to choose relevant strategies to combat corrupt practices. This study has implications for business corporations, governments and IFIs. It reveals how the awareness of such uncertainties and presumptions about corruption is related to the CSR discourse.

The originality of the paper is to unveil some presumptions about corruption that have not been compared with the results obtained from the Corruption Perception Index, the Bribe Payers Index and the International Country Risk Guide.

This chapter summarizes public perceptions and expert evaluations concerning elected officials' levels of corruption, focusing on comparisons between the United States and 29 European Union “plus” (EU+) countries (28 EU Member States in 2018 plus Switzerland). While surveys of corruption have become more widely available in recent years, there is still a lack of comparable data focusing on specific government institutions, rather than general perceptions of corruption by elected or public officials. Thus, this study takes advantage of four major sources of citizens' perceptions of corruption to develop an average score and ranking for a total of 30 countries: the 2017 Global Corruption Barometer, the 2017 Eurobarometer subtitled “Integration of Immigrants in the European Union and Corruption,” the 2016 International Social Survey Program's (ISSP) Module on the “Role of Government V,” and the Pew Research Center's 2018 “Global Attitudes & Trends Survey.” Three expert assessments of levels of corruption supplement these surveys: the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project's measure of legislative corruption, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2016, and the World Bank's 2016 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) assessment of the “Control of Corruption.” Finally, the chapter tests several hypotheses derived from the literature using the various corruption measures as the dependent variable and finds that choosing a measure of corruption based on citizens' perceptions or expert evaluations is substantively important. Thus, one must exercise caution when selecting one type of measure over the other.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the adoption of international accounting and auditing standards on corruption perception. In addition, this study examines the strength of auditing and reporting standards (SARS) that mediate the relationship.

Agency theory and bonding theory were applied in this paper to investigate the impact of the adoption of international accounting and auditing standards on corruption perception. Data from 130 countries during three years were collected from Transparency International, Worldwide Governance Indicators, International Federation of Accountants, World Economic Forum, World Bank, Freedom House and World Justice Project. Hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results show a positive impact of the adoption of international accounting and auditing standards on corruption perception, directly and indirectly, through the SARS.

The results provide an insight into corruption eradication strategy through the adoption of international accounting and auditing standards and strengthen the auditing and reporting standards.

This study is distinctive, as no study has yet examined the impact of the adoption of international accounting standards construct, which contains International Financial Reporting Standards and International Standards on Auditing, on the corruption perception. The corruption perception construct is developed by combining the corruption perception index and the control of corruption indicators.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of corruption on trade.

The authors estimate gravity equations with the last econometric advances on a wide sample of countries and years using three different measures of corruption. Two of them belong to the so-called perception-based indexes and the third is derived from a structural model that takes into account the causes and indicators of corruption across countries.

A negative effect of corruption on trade appears with perceptions, but it is not widespread. However, the authors find sensible evidence of the “grease the wheels” view with the structural index if low and middle income countries are implicated. Additionally, when using this measure, differences in corruption levels negatively impact trade. Both results are in line with expectations.

Moreover, membership in regional trade agreements does not seem to significantly alter these results.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature by empirically investigating the impact of digital competitiveness and technology on corruption under the moderating effect of some cultural and economic control variables and providing evidence on the links between corruption and various cultural dimensions at the country level.

The cross-sectional sample covers 61 countries (41 high-income and 20 lower-income countries) during the 2016–2020 period, and the analysis was carried out for both the full sample and the subsamples.

The results provide clear evidence supporting the hypothesis that digitalisation and technology significantly affect the perceived level of corruption under the moderating role of cultural framework and economic development. Furthermore, the most significant cultural dimensions of corruption are individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and indulgence versus restraint, even if, in some cases, its influence might be felt differently when the results are estimated on subsamples. Thus, in the case of indulgence versus restraint, high-income countries with higher indulgence scores would register higher scores for the corruption perception index and thus a better control of corruption, while for lower-income countries, the more indulgent these countries are, the weaker the corruption control will be. Furthermore, our results validate a powerful and significant correlation between the index of economic freedom and corruption in both digitalisation and technology.

This study may have relevant implications for policymakers who need to recognise the role of digitalisation and technology in the fight against corruption but considering the cultural and economic characteristics specific to each country.

To the authors' knowledge, the relationship between digital competitiveness, technology and corruption within an economic and cultural framework, while highlighting the differences between high-income and lower-income countries, has not been previously documented in the literature. Thus, this article argues that the level of digital competitiveness and the adoption of technology would significantly impact the level of perceived corruption, although this impact could be felt differently by countries in the high-income category compared to countries in the lower-level income category.

This study aims to examine how corruption influences the voluntary disclosure of corporate governance (CG)-related information by developed country multinationals (DC-MNEs) and emerging market multinationals (EM-MNEs) investing in six Latin American countries.

The study uses information from 300 MNEs included in the 2018 ranking of the 500 Largest Latin American companies (America Economía, 2018). Each MNE’s final annual report for the financial year ending 2018 was examined and coded to obtain the corporate governance disclosure index. Fractional probit regression was applied to test the hypotheses of the research.

DC-MNEs disclose more CG-related information in corrupt environments than EM-MNEs. This differentiated behavior occurs because DC-MNEs face higher legitimacy pressures in corrupt environments than EM-MNEs and because EM-MNEs are more experienced than DC-MNEs in dealing with such corrupt environments.

While both EM-MNEs and DC-MNEs need to continue investing in corrupt countries to grow, they need to disclose CG-related information as a strategic tool to manage the legitimacy issues triggered by corruption in the markets they operate.

Despite corruption being pervasive in emerging markets, its implications for firms’ strategic behaviors are still under-researched. This paper extends the scope of corporate governance and international business fields by studying how MNEs respond to relevant dimensions of the macro environment. This research shows that voluntary disclosure of CG-related information is a strategic response of the MNEs to gain legitimacy in corrupt environments.