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This study investigates how perceived political corruption, a generally overlooked corruption type, relates to firms' new product development (NPD) through perceived regulatory obstacles. It also examines firms' perceptions of business association support in this relationship, considering these associations' potential support for NPD.

This study conducted an empirical analysis of 1,663 firms in Turkey, a country noted for a history of legislative corruption, and in which there are strong business associations. Drawing the data from the World Bank's 2019 Enterprise Surveys Dataset, this study tested the hypotheses via the two-stage factor score regression method.

This study finds that perceived political corruption significantly relates to NPD negatively through perceived regulatory obstacles. It also finds that the perceived support of business associations to NPD is significantly greater when firms perceive regulatory obstacles but only slight political corruption.

As far as political corruption is concerned, this study reveals that corruption can also be the cause of regulatory obstacles, expanding the common view of corruption as a means of overcoming regulatory obstacles to NPD. In addition, it introduces the role of business associations in this relationship by revealing their support to NPD for different levels of perceived political corruption and regulatory obstacles.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between corporate corruption risk and environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting and if this relationship is moderated by business ethics.

Data from a sample of 347 European firms selected from the ESG Index between 2010 and 2020 were used to test the model using panel data and multiple regressions. This paper considered the feasible generalized least squares estimation for linear panel data models. A multiple regression model is used to analyze the moderating effect of business ethics on the association between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting. For robustness analyses, the authors included the alternative measure of the dependent variable, and they applied the simultaneous equation model for the endogeneity test.

The empirical results reveal a negative relationship between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting. Furthermore, the findings suggest that business ethics positively moderate the relationship between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting.

This paper presents an enormous contribution to the various economic agents involved in the company. The results could attract the attention of socially responsible investors and, above all, corporate citizens. Moreover, the managers of corrupt companies could take into account the results of this study by being more committed to an optimized transparency strategy on ESG reporting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the moderating role of business ethics on the relationship between corporate corruption risk and ESG reporting in the European context. It is also the first study documenting that business ethics reinforce the relationship between firm corruption and nonfinancial information transparency. This study fills a research gap as it expands the existing literature, which generally focuses on the impact of corporate corruption on ESG reporting.

This study aims to investigate whether firms involved in a major corruption scandal, with broad ramifications across several emerging and advanced markets, design the content of their corporate codes of conduct to either improve corporate ethical standards and practices or merely manipulate the impression of stakeholders.

This study adopts an impression management perspective. It uses content analysis techniques to examine the codes of conduct adopted by seven Brazilian engineering and construction multinationals accused of corruption. The analysis covered five major themes: (1) forms of corruption, (2) values or principles, (3) interested parties, (4) procedures and routines and (5) punitive action.

The study provides detailed evidence that the codes of conduct adopted by these firms are mere artifices that aimed at meeting legal requirements but do not target the relevant corporate audience involved in grand corruption. At best, such a code may impede petty and bureaucratic corruption.

This research contributes to improving the understanding of how Latin American multinationals adopted codes of conduct after a major scandal and how they failed—at least to some extent—to design codes complying with established corporate governance principles. It shows that management manipulated the impression of stakeholders by selectively adopting or omitting certain terms, examining or concealing various issues and addressing mainly petty crimes rather than grand corruption. It also identifies areas where Western ethical values conflict with established practices and cultural norms in Latin America.

This study investigated the moderating role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and foreign direct investment. The purpose of this study is to understand whether corruption has different effects on the location decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) depending on the regime type.

This study explored how institutional context influenced the impacts of corruption on the location decisions of MNEs, specifically using a sample of Chinese cross-border mergers and acquisitions between 2000 and 2020.

This study assessed the role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and the location decisions of Chinese MNEs. In general, this study found that Chinese MNEs were hindered by host country corruption, but that these detrimental effects were weaker in the presence of more effective democratic institutions.

This study contributes to the literature on institutional factors in international business through its simultaneous investigation of the effects of both democracy and corruption on the location decisions of MNEs. Moreover, there is a prevailing view that Chinese MNEs are willing to enter countries with high corruption, but the results of this study indicate that they are risk-averse in ways similar to their Western counterparts.

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 the association between anti-corruption corporate disclosure and earnings management practices by bringing evidence from a developed market.

The study uses data from non-financial FTSE 100 Shares in 2016 and 2017. This study develops a disclosure index to capture the anti-corruption disclosures and run pooled, fixed effects and generalized methods of moments regression models to explore the anti-corruption disclosure–earnings management association. This study also disentangles discretionary accruals into positive and negative, use adjusted discretionary accrual computation and take a more conservative view on discretionary accruals computation as an additional analysis.

The results show a negative and significant association between anti-corruption disclosure and earnings management practices. When disentangling discretionary accruals (overvalued/positive and undervalued/negative), the authors found that higher anti-corruption disclosures were negatively associated with positive discretionary accruals, but not associated with negative discretionary accruals. The additional analysis confirmed the previous results, showing that anti-corruption disclosures are perceived as a substantive practice, rather than a mere disclosure practice for legitimacy reasons.

This study contributes to debate on the symbolic versus the substantive uses of anti-corruption disclosures in the UK context.

The study aims to investigate the effect of corruption and crime on the investments by firms in emerging economies (EEs).

The study adopts the generalised methods of moments (GMM) estimator and data across 57 EEs.

The study shows that crime management, corruption and external quality assurance drive-up investments. Additionally, investments decline with firm age and crime incidence. Corruption and crime managements increase investments by exporting firms more than non-exporting firms investments. Also, external auditor services benefit investments by large firms more than small-medium firms.

There is a need for EEs to implement policies that will curtail corruption and create a level playing field and sustainable firm growth. EEs firms must be innovative to expand their productive investments and grow over time. Also, EEs firms should seek external quality certification, invest in internal security and monitor goods in transit.

The present paper makes an attempt to investigate the determinants that affect FDI inflows distribution among Indian states. Together with traditional determinants, the impact of institutional determinants on state-level FDI inflows distribution in India has been analysed.

The study uses panel data for a period of 20 years (2000–2019) for 17 groups of Indian states (29 states and 7 UTs). The empirical evidence is based on the panel data method and the findings support Dunning's OLI theory. As the data for some indicators for the institutional environment is not available at the state level, hence we used component analysis to arrive at the single component for the institutional factor. The study takes into account corruption, legal system, industrial disputes, man-days lost, labour availability, political risk, protection of IPR and agglomeration as potential macroeconomic and institutional determinants.

Results show that FDI inflows into Indian states is driven mainly by institutional environment. From our analysis, the author infers that the institutional variables such as legal system, IPR, corruption, political instability play an important role in determining the distribution of FDI inflows at the state level in India. Together with that GFCF and agglomeration are also important determinants of state-wise FDI inflows.

The major limitation of the study is that it doesn't include moderated impact of economic and institutional determinants of FDI inflows in Indian states, which can be an avenue for future research. Future research can also carried out taking district-level data to further examine the determinants at district level in India.

The contribution of the present paper is three-fold, first, the author constructs a measure of different institutional variables, after normalization of data for the period 2000–2019, and the author choose the highest explaining factor with the highest variance explained then we constructed the indices for select variable, which further has been used in the panel data analysis technique. The author has found that macroeconomic variables, as well as institutional variables, are significant to attract FDI at the state level in India. The paper shows that corruption, political risk, IPR and legal system are the major institutional determinants of FDI inflows in India at the state level. States with higher domestic investment attract more FDI inflows, moreover, agglomeration is a very important determinant as the investors are more confident in investing at the same location, the reason behind this may be that the investors want to avoid the registration procedure for new land, administrative formalities or they feel more secure at the same place and keen to invest at the same place again.

The media is described as a fourth estate of the realm due to its ability to frame and shape discussions on governance and provide a stimulus for fighting corruption. But is the media really an effective tool for fighting corruption? This question arises due to the possibility of the media being used for propaganda, biased reporting and media owners’ and journalists’ engagement in corruption. The current study addresses the question by exploring the relationship between the media and corruption from the perspectives of Ghanaian justice and anti-corruption officials.

The study adopts a qualitative approach by interviewing justice and anti-corruption officials across three administrative regions in Ghana.

The results show that while justice officials describe the media as a medium for accusing officials unjustifiably and exaggerating the scale of corruption, anti-corruption officials believe the media helps to fight corruption. In addition to uncovering and exposing public officials’ corruption, the media is also a double-edged sword characterised by intra-vigilance: the media hold “their own” (i.e. journalists fighting corruption) accountable through criticism and exposure of wrongdoings.

The double-edged nature of the media can strengthen and enhance the fight against corruption because anti-corruption actors and journalists will be cautious as misjudgements or errors committed will not be overlooked or concealed by the media. Therefore, anti-corruption agencies in Ghana can collaborate with the media to uncover and expose corruption committed by public officials and even journalists or media owners.

This study is the first in Ghana to explore the relationship between the media and corruption from the perspectives of justice and anti-corruption officials. The approach, frameworks and methodology adopted in this study can be applied in similar studies in other countries on the African continent and beyond.

The purpose of the study is to examine the obstacle in doing business and determinants of credit adoption by the textile enterprises in India.

The study is based on World Bank’s Enterprises Survey, there are 571 enterprises involved in textile business. The enterprises survey has response on wide range of business obstacles which are categorized under three broad categories, namely, access to resource, business regulations and market externalities. Chi-square test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) have been used to examine the significant difference among firm’s profile and perceived business obstacles across the firm size. Furthermore, binary logistic regression model has been applied to explore the determinants of credit adoption by textile enterprises.

A statistically significant difference has been found in size of firms and legal status nature of establishment, gender of top manager, main product market and credit adoption from financial institutions. Majority of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are sole proprietorship firm while large enterprises are limited partnership firms. Similarly, large enterprises have relatively more female as a top manager and international market for their product. ANOVA reveals equal degree of obstacles in doing textile business across the firm size. The logistic regression coefficient and marginal effects reveal that firm size, main market,gender of owner, number of establishment in the firms positive and significantly affects the credit adoption by 3 textile enterprises.

The study has some policy implications for various stakeholders such as textile business managers and promoters, government, investors and bankers for entrepreneurship development in textile sector. The study suggests that the government should incentivize small- and medium-sized businesses to increase their exports. The results show that despite government efforts to finance SMEs, fewer SMEs are receiving both short- and long-term credit. To help SMEs in the textile industry overcome financial difficulties and expand their main product market to both domestic and international levels, a soft loan should be provided based on the characteristics of textile enterprises.

The present study suggests the evidence-based understanding of textile business environment. The value and uniqueness of this study is to explore an ease of business textile sector using comprehensive enterprises survey data of World Bank.