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The purpose of this paper is to analyze firms and employees’ strategies in illegitimate institutional contexts in which non-governmental armed groups enforce illegitimate activities in firms and civil society. The aim is to recognize employees as key and effective players in implementing ambidextrous organizational and human resource management (HRM) strategies. We know little regarding employee norms and behaviors in complying with global market standards while surviving in environments characterized by high levels of civil violence and crime.

This paper presents an explorative, qualitative study based on 65 semi-structured interviews and conversations with employees in Colombia and Mexico over four years.

The findings of this paper indicate that the presence of non-governmental armed groups forces firms, HR departments and front-line managers to strategically exploit security measures inspired by employees’ informal institutions to protect firm assets while implementing innovative exploration strategies to improve employee work conditions, survive in unsafe environments and remain internationally competitive.

The findings suggest that organization, HRM and employee ambidexterity are organizational advantages in illegitimate institutional contexts. This study contributes to the literature linking ambidexterity and institutional theory by emphasizing informal institutions when examining employment relationships in unsafe environments.

o objetivo deste trabalho é fazer uma análise das estratégias de empresas e empregados em contextos institucionais ilegítimos onde grupos armados afetam empresas e sociedade civil através da implementação de atividades fora da lei. O objetivo é reconhecer aos empregados como funcionários-chave e efetivos na implementação de estratégias de ambidestria organizacional e da gestão de recursos humanos (HRM). Conhecemos poucas informações sobre as políticas, estratégias, práticas e comportamentos dos funcionários para cumprir com os padrões globais, as suas responsabilidades e funções no cargo, enquanto procuram sobreviver em simultâneo em contextos que têm um alto nível de violência e criminalidade contra a população.

Este artigo apresenta um estudo exploratório sob uma abordagem qualitativa com base em 65 entrevistas semiestruturadas e conversas com funcionários na Colômbia e no México ao longo de um período de quatro anos.

Nossas descobertas indicam que os grupos armados não governamentais têm forçado organizações, setores de recursos humanos e gerentes da linha de frente a explorar estrategicamente medidas de segurança inspiradas nas instituições informais para proteger os ativos da empresa. Além disso, as empresas têm adotado estratégias exploratórias inovadoras para melhorar as condições de trabalho dos funcionários, lidar e sobreviver em ambientes de risco e continuar sendo competitivas internacionalmente.

Nossas descobertas sugerem que a organização, a gestão dos recursos humanos e ambidestria dos funcionários são uma vantagem organizacional em contextos institucionais ilegitimos. Nosso estudo tem como objetivo contribuir para a literatura que liga a ambidestria com a teoria institucional com o fim de destacar o papel das instituições informais na análise das relações de trabalho em ambientes inseguros.

Instituições Informais, instituições ilegítimas, Ambidestria, Gupos armados não-governamentais, Colômbia, México

Tipo de artículo – Trabajo de pesquisa

el propósito de este trabajo es analizar las estrategias de las empresas y los empleados en contextos institucionales ilegítimos en los que los grupos armados afectan a las empresas y la sociedad civil mediante la implementación de actividades al margen de la ley. El objetivo es reconocer a los empleados como actores clave y efectivos en la implementación de estrategias de ambidestreza organizacional y de gestión de recursos humanos (HRM). Sabemos poco sobre las políticas, estrategias, prácticas y comportamientos de los empleados para cumplir con los estándares mundiales, sus responsabilidades y funciones en el cargo y al mismo tiempo sobrevivir en entornos caracterizados por un alto grado de delincuencia y violencia hacia la población civil.

este documento presenta un estudio exploratorio bajo una perspectiva cualitativo basado en 65 entrevistas semiestructuradas y conversacionales con empleados en Colombia y México durante un período de cuatro años.

nuestros hallazgos indican que grupos armados al margen de la ley han obligado a organizaciones, departamentos de recursos humanos y gerentes de primera línea a explotar estratégicamente medidas de seguridad inspiradas en instituciones informales para proteger activos de la empresa mientras implementan estrategias exploratorias innovadoras para mejorar las condiciones de trabajo de los empleados, sobrellevar y sobrevivir en entornos de riesgo e inseguros y, a la par, seguir siendo competitivos en el plano internacional.

nuestros hallazgos sugieren que la organización, la gestión de recursos humanos y la ambidestreza de los empleados son una ventaja organizativa en contextos institucionales ilegítimos. Nuestro estudio tiene como objetivo contribuir a la literatura que vincula la ambidestreza y la teoría institucional destacando las instituciones informales para examinar las relaciones en entornos inseguros.

Instituciones informales, Instituciones ilegítimas, Ambidestreza, Grupos armados no gubernamentales, Colombia, México

Trabalho de investigação

This paper develops a comprehensive multidimensional legitimacy model that provides a generic framework for exploring legitimacy in institutions – including the legitimacy of rules, codes, collective activities and organisations themselves. Through the use of 10 dimensions, covering concerns with fairness, efficacy, integrity, expectations, inclusive decision-making and more, the model aims to capture the full suite of distinct features that may be morally relevant in any given case. Each dimension is a continuum and can provide reasons for moral challenge, toleration or pro-active support. The model can be used to diagnose ethical risk areas, to compare reform initiatives and to inform empirical studies of descriptive legitimacy and the social licence to operate. It may also be used as an applied ethics methodology to evaluate overall institutional moral legitimacy; the paper discusses the contextual judgments required for this, including the way that some legitimacy factors can operate as defeaters, such that a serious failure on a pivotal dimension cannot be overcome by support from other dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to advance a new explanation for cross-country variations in the participation of small businesses in the informal economy. Drawing upon institutional theory, it proposes that the greater the asymmetry between the codified laws and regulations of formal institutions (state morality) and the unwritten socially shared rules of informal institutions (civic morality), the greater is the propensity of small businesses to participate in the informal economy. To analyse this, the extent to which small businesses evade payroll taxes by paying employees an undeclared (envelope) wage in addition to their official declared salary is analysed.

To evaluate this, data are reported from a 2013 Eurobarometer survey involving 5,174 face-to-face interviews with employees in small businesses across the 28 member states of the European Union (EU-28).

The finding is that small businesses display a greater propensity to engage in this informal wage practice in countries where there is a higher degree of asymmetry between the codified laws and regulations of formal institutions (state morality) and the unwritten socially shared rules of informal institutions (civic morality). A multi-level logistic regression analysis reveals these to be countries which have lower qualities of governance, lower levels of taxation and intervention in the labour market and less effective social transfer systems.

The major limitation of this study is that it has only examined whether employees in small businesses receive informal wages. Future cross-country surveys should analyse a wider range of ways in which small businesses participate in the informal economy such as under-reporting turnover.

This is the first known analysis of cross-country variations in the participation of small businesses in the informal economy.

Scholarly interest in the business effects of organised crime (OC) has recently increased. This study aims to conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) on the conditions under which OC could pose a threat to or take control of firms within a particular context.

We use narrative synthesis and thematic analysis, with a sample of 46 theoretical and empirical studies published over the past 30 years on the relationship between OC and firms within the disciplines of Business, Management and Accounting (BMA).

SLR and thematic analysis show that scholarly interest has focused on four key domains: OC as a firm, the impact of OC on firms, firms’ efforts to counter OC’s influence and governmental interventions. Using medical metaphors, we also develop a diagram depicting the interplay between OC and firms within the BMA literature.

This study contributes to the literature shaping an agenda to steer future research towards these four key themes. The effectiveness of anti-OC tools and measures depends on a thorough understanding of local norms, behaviours and business practices. In addition to measurement and methodological challenges, several grey areas remain, including the distinction between criminal enterprises and legitimate businesses. Ambiguities also surround the circumstances under which the OC preys upon firms or employs them to establish dominance over a territory.

In the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s, the abolition of capital punishment was virtually unthinkable. However, a new form of abolitionism – which I call Rule of Law abolitionism – has raised the hopes of death penalty opponents. In this chapter, I elucidate the logic of the Rule of Law abolitionist argument, distinguishing it from its more familiar doctrinal and moral variants. I then assess its strengths and weaknesses. On the basis of this critique, I indicate the route Rule of Law abolitionism must travel to bring about the demise of the death penalty.

Understanding societal expectations of a leader's responsibility and context-specific challenges in less-researched emerging economies has become imperative for foreign Multinational enterprises (MNEs) to survive in these contexts while developing globally responsible leaders. Identification of institutionally sanctioned characteristics, competencies and strategies that assist leaders in dealing with such challenges while achieving shared value has wider implications for academics, practitioners and the literature on responsible leadership (RL), which is the purpose of this paper.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews of 28 senior indigenous leaders in 3 Indian Multinational corporations (MNCs) in construction sector, following a grounded theory approach.

The authors identified three vital institutionally driven challenges and four individual-level societal-driven factors, subsequently influencing leaders' strategic decisions and choices to deal with such challenges beyond passive conformance. Contrary to the previous findings, this study also briefly discusses that a mere ethical climate is insufficient; organizations must develop a holistic values climate that works as contextual factors to influence RL.

Contrary to the previous findings suggesting Indian leaders' conformance to constraining forces to RL, by adopting a multilevel approach, the authors identify the context-specific strategic behaviors that responsible leaders adopt in dealing with such forces responsibly. Thus, it is the first multilevel inductive approach conducted in a non-Western context, offering a discrete understanding of RL while addressing some of the inconsistencies in the literature and contributing to cross-cultural leadership research. Also, findings highlight the factors of RL that are more emic and etic for generalization.

This paper aims to apply the Legitimacy-Based View (LBV) of political risk to the experience of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) in the First World War. The paper shows that HSBC’s ability to survive this conflict was due, in part, to its ability to manage political risk by maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders in its home market(s), Hong Kong and the UK.

This case study is based on the surviving internal correspondence from this period in the HSBC Group archives in London and other primary sources.

This paper suggests that maintaining legitimacy in the home market is crucial to firm survival and profitability. Managers’ efforts to bolster firm legitimacy should ensure that individuals in all of the relevant government departments continue to regard the multinational enterprise (MNE) as legitimate.

This paper shows that the LBV is a potentially powerful analytical tool, but it also argues that the LBV must be modified so as to incorporate insights from the theoretical literature on ethnic and national identities, particularly the insight that such identities are culturally constructed and malleable.

Warfare tends to increase the degree to which a MNE’s stakeholders feel emotional bonds to their respective nations. HSBC’s experience in the First World War suggests that continued profitability in wartime may depend on the firm’s ability to shed its peacetime “world citizen” identity in favour of one that is more closely aligned with that of its home nation. Preserving political capital in wartime may require the ruthless termination of relationships with clients and employees who are associated with the enemy nation. Another lesson that MNE managers can derive from this paper is that preserving legitimacy in the home country may require the head office to exert more control over overseas managers, than would be the case in peace. A MNE in wartime that is concerned about the loss of legitimacy in the home country should consider adopting an organizational architecture that temporarily reduces subsidiary autonomy.

Buckley (2009) called for the re-integration of business history in International Business research. This paper is part of the ongoing historic turn in International Business and other management disciplines. This paper also argues that International Business scholars need to consider the impact of past wars on contemporary multinationals as we may witness the re-emergence of Great Power rivalries similar to those that led to the First World War. This paper proceeds on the assumption the probabilities of a war between two major capitalist economies are non-trivial and that additional investigation of the impact of major interstate warfare on MNEs is therefore merited. Historical research can help us to think about what a war between capitalist countries would mean for today’s MNEs.

This paper aims to identify the underlying key components of illicit financial flows (IFFs) and highlights the priority areas where government resources should be pooled under a whole of government approach to mitigate the risks posed by IFFs. These areas are tax avoidance and tax evasion (specifically intra-company profit shifting, investment and profit shifting within the extractive sector, fraud and beneficial ownership), anti-corruption measures, governance and accountability measures, anti-money laundering effectiveness and effectiveness in the detection of falsified customs declarations.

The concept of IFFs is emerging as an umbrella term for bringing together seemingly disconnected issues. The concept is ill-defined, but there are various identifiable components supporting the term IFF such as capital flight, corruption, money laundering, tax avoidance, tax havens and transfer pricing practices. The author identifies the key areas of concern through a literature review and recommends prioritization of short- to medium-term risk areas and long-term policy imperatives.

In the short- to medium-term, an effective “whole-of-government” approach should be based on uniform risk identification and prioritization between mandated government agencies and in the long run, it should be focused on building responsive and effective institutions through a process of good governance and effective taxation.

A large body of literature deals with “IFFs” and the “whole-of-government approach” as separate concepts. This paper draws on the existing literature and identifies priority areas for addressing IFFs, and, for these to be successful, they are entirely dependent on a whole-of-government approach – both in the short and long run.

The paper aims to argue the case for the introduction of a global anti‐money laundering (AML) court. The proposed court as an institution can engender a rule‐based ethos as well as an environment for the transposition of AML regimes and requisite global changes into the society.

The paper was written by exploiting the significance of the court system to the development of any society. In particular, the paper draws on a pivotal role played by the European Court of Justice in enhancing economic integration of European member countries. Another example utilised by this paper was the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) in the WTO. The DSM evolved an effective framework for settling international trade disputes and fundamentally helped to streamline the system. This paper is of the contention that the court would ease the adoption of global AML regimes and consequently ease the co‐existence of countries in relation to global AML initiatives.

The paper has delineated that any global initiatives either on money laundering (ML) or otherwise will have to reside in a form of institutional framework for them to work effectively. Short of that, it is possible that there will be enormous challenges for global AML regimes to function properly as envisaged.

The author is cognizant of the fact that states are still mandated to veto his prepositions based on the principle of sovereignty of nations. States can also refuse to lend their support – in its various dimensions to the proposed court.

It has to be noted that creating global AML regimes that are not going to work is not good enough and in case it amounts to a wastage of scarce resources that would better be utilised somewhere else.

ML in its various manifestations has far reaching consequences for lives of people wherever it is committed and should be accorded the seriousness it deserves.

The paper has been written based on the appreciation of the need to create enforcement mechanisms of engendered global AML/combating financing of terrorism (CFT) regimes. There are so many regimes masquerading as global, having been constituted with the mandate that give them a global reach and yet, they do not live up to their expectation.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the risks posed by politically exposed persons (PEPs) and explain the money laundering risk when entering into financial transactions and business relationships with PEPs. Risk mitigation by regulated entities and corruption prevention strategies are also outlined. To minimise money‐laundering risks associated with PEPs, legislation will need to adapt to deal with threats that organized criminals and terrorists seek to exploit. Future directions for research in relation to PEPs are also identified.

An analysis of how regulated entities can reduce their risk of money laundering when entering into financial transactions and business relationships with PEPs is presented.

It was found that there is a need to harmonise legally enforceable obligations targeting PEPs. PEP monitoring, arguably, should be extended to individuals holding prominent public functions in their own jurisdictions, individuals exercising functions not normally considered prominent but who have political exposure comparable to that of similar positions at a prominent level, and individuals holding important positions in private sectors such as CEOs of listed companies. Regulated entities in the private sector need to play their part to mitigate their risks such as conducting ongoing environmental scans of risks of money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

This paper improves awareness of the potential money laundering risks when entering into financial transactions and business relationships with PEPs and makes several recommendations to mitigate the risk posed by PEPs.