The implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is crucial for the legitimacy of an organization in today's globalized economy. This study aims to enrich our knowledge of the implementation of the largest voluntary CSR initiative-the UN Global Compact (UNGC). Drawing on insights from stakeholder, network, and institutional theory, I derive a positive impact of UNGC participation duration on the implementation level of the UNGC principles, despite potential weaknesses in the initiative's accountability structure. Moreover, I scrutinize the validity of the newly introduced UNGC "Differentiation Programme" before applying this framework in the empirical analysis. Results from ordinal, linear, and instrumental variable regression models suggest that, contrary to claims made by UNGC critics, the duration of UNGC participation does affect the level of UNGC implementation. However, this effect appears to be much smaller than previous practitioner studies have suggested. Moreover, strong local UNGC networks affect the implementation level of the UNGC positively. Their hypothesized moderating role between UNGC participation duration and

How do organizations respond to the loss of legitimacy in the context of disclosed corruption, and what drives the particular responses adopted? In this article, we study the organizational strategies of three multinational companies before, during, and after legitimacy loss due to disclosed organizational corruption. We explore why some multinational companies exceed regulatory expectations and choose radical strategies that substantially influence their environment by defining a new benchmark of anticorruption practices, while others follow a more gradual approach. We build on the concept of legitimacy in institutional theory and focus on three strategies that organizations tend to adopt to regain legitimacy: isomorphic adaptation, moral reasoning, and strategic manipulation. Based on our empirical study, we suggest that when a transgression is accompanied by a strong legitimacy shock, transgressors are likely to see no alternative but to react both radically and instantly. We identify two distinct extremes of strategic manipulation: decoupling and substantial influence.

We study the corruption control strategies at three Multinational Companies (MNC) before, during, and after the disclosure of corruption scandals and the initiation of legal procedures.In particular, we want to explore why some MNCs after a corruption scandal exceed regulatory expectations, choose proactive strategies, and influence their environment as institutional entrepreneurs that define best practices and new industry standards. Other companies, by contrast, act in a more incremental and self-referred way. We build on the concept of legitimacy in institutional theory, distinguish four strategies to regain legitimacy: decoupling, isomorphic adaptation, moral reasoning, and substantial influence, and explain the choice and sequence of these strategies. While all three case firms managed to (eventually) adapt to the compliance requirements imposed by external regulatory authorities, we found that only very distinct constellations of scandal and reintegration process characteristics, such as the presence of a strong legitimacy shock and the necessity to react both radically and instantly, forces the company into the role of an institutional entrepreneur. In cases where such legitimacy shocks are lacking, companies have more time to react and hence rather choose to gradually adapt their organizational processes to regulatory expectations. Rather than acting as institutional entrepreneurs, these companies rely almost exclusively on participating in moral reasoning activities to safeguard their new anti-corruption strategy. However, if change processes occur rather reluctantly after the disclosure of a big scandal, we found that externally imposed monitors may exercise severe pressure forcing the transgressor to eventually install a leading set of corruption controls.

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