Abstract:Corruption is a plague with serious economic and social consequences and has a greater impact than people perceive. The impacts on business are severe but often underestimated. The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of public governance environment on the strategical opportunistic use of related party transactions in family firms. Considering corruption as a good indicator of conditions that boost unethical behavior, the study investigates whether high standard of public governance quality at a regi… Show more
“…1 Its detrimental impact extends beyond immediate financial losses, affecting stakeholders' trust, market integrity, and overall economic stability (Cicchiello et al, 2023). Organizations that engage in corrupt practices compromise their ethical standing and risk legal consequences and reputational damage (Medioli et al, 2024). Majeed et al (2024) found a significant negative relationship between corruption and green innovation.…”
The study employs a lifecycle perspective to investigate the relationship between corrupt practices and sustainability reporting. The final sample is composed of 1388 firms from four European countries, namely France, Germany, UK, and Sweden. Data were retrieved from the Thomson Reuters database from 2015 to 2022. The findings revealed that corruption significantly reduces sustainability disclosure across different life cycle stages, albeit with varying magnitudes, perhaps due to the misallocation of resources and lack of incentives. The findings also showed that the detrimental effects of corruption on sustainability reporting is most profound during the “Shake‐Out” stage of a company life cycle. By adopting a lifecycle perspective, the research offers a new and in‐depth understanding of corruption's impact on environmental disclosure, offering policymakers and regulators valuable insights into enhancing environmental and sustainability practices.
“…1 Its detrimental impact extends beyond immediate financial losses, affecting stakeholders' trust, market integrity, and overall economic stability (Cicchiello et al, 2023). Organizations that engage in corrupt practices compromise their ethical standing and risk legal consequences and reputational damage (Medioli et al, 2024). Majeed et al (2024) found a significant negative relationship between corruption and green innovation.…”
The study employs a lifecycle perspective to investigate the relationship between corrupt practices and sustainability reporting. The final sample is composed of 1388 firms from four European countries, namely France, Germany, UK, and Sweden. Data were retrieved from the Thomson Reuters database from 2015 to 2022. The findings revealed that corruption significantly reduces sustainability disclosure across different life cycle stages, albeit with varying magnitudes, perhaps due to the misallocation of resources and lack of incentives. The findings also showed that the detrimental effects of corruption on sustainability reporting is most profound during the “Shake‐Out” stage of a company life cycle. By adopting a lifecycle perspective, the research offers a new and in‐depth understanding of corruption's impact on environmental disclosure, offering policymakers and regulators valuable insights into enhancing environmental and sustainability practices.
“…Medioli et al (2022) analyse the influence of public governance environment on the strategical opportunistic use of related party transactions in family firms. Considering corruption as a good indicator of conditions that boost unethical behaviour, the study investigates whether high standard of public governance quality at a regional level, as well as low corruption, help to reduce specific types of opportunistic transactions.…”
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confidence: 99%
“…Considering corruption as a good indicator of conditions that boost unethical behaviour, the study investigates whether high standard of public governance quality at a regional level, as well as low corruption, help to reduce specific types of opportunistic transactions. Based on a regression analysis on European listed family firms in Italy, France and Germany, Medioli et al (2022) find that high public governance quality at the regional level reduces companies' opportunistic transactions.…”
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confidence: 99%
“…All the research questions provided in the special issue proposal have been addressed by the contributors: Ruggiero and Mussari (2022) focus on the definitions, characteristics and issues of corporate corruption and Trequattrini et al (2022) analyse the contribution of blockchain‐based technologies to anticorruption practices; Changwony and Kyiu (2022) examine the implications of business strategies on the tendency for firms to engage in corruption; Cappelli et al (2022) explore the challenge of digital change and its contribution to transparency and anticorruption policies within Italian universities; Medioli et al (2022) analyse the influence of public governance environment on the strategical opportunistic use of related party transactions in family firms; and Cardoni et al (2022) investigate the value relevance of corporate governance and anticorruption policies from a sustainable value perspective, basing the analysis on institutional and stakeholder theories; Moscariello et al (2022), through a single case study, offer practical insights to understand what are the main attributes that distinguish an effective compliance programme from a formal/legal one.…”
“…OESIC has typical characteristics of self-interest ethical decision-making, which emphasizes maximizing individual interests as the decision-making goal and not hesitating to cause damage to the interests of others (Victor and Cullen, 1988). Although many studies have explored the impact of OESIC on unethical behaviour in the general context (Wang and Hsieh, 2013;Gorsira et al 2018;Joe et al 2018;De Hoogh et al 2021), despite increasing research on unethical behaviour in the general business context (Medioli et al 2022), there is still little in-depth research on the impact of OESIC on unethical behaviour in the accounting context and its related mechanism (Rogošić and Perica, 2023). Therefore, we focus on the effect of OESIC on UAB in this study.…”
Organizational Ethical Self-Interest Climate (OESIC), a type of Organizational Ethical Climate (OEC) that exists widely in various organizations, plays an important role in unethical behaviours. Unfortunately, there is still little in-depth research on the effect of OESIC on Unethical Accounting Behaviour (UAB) and its related mechanism. This paper aims to explore the impact of OESIC on UAB with two different motivations i.e., Unethical Pro-Self Accounting Behaviour (UPSAB) and Unethical Pro-Organizational Accounting Behaviour (UPOAB). In addition, this paper studies the moderating effect of Confucian ShiZhong Thinking (CSZ Thinking), a typical characteristic of the Chinese people. In this paper, questionnaire data from 258 Chinese accountants at different professional levels were collected. A regression model was used to analyse and test the collected data. The results indicate that OESIC is positively correlated with UAB, and the effect of OESIC on UPSAB is more significant than the effect on UPOAB. CSZ Thinking weakens the positive impact of OESIC on UPSAB and UPOAB. This paper expands the research scope of OESIC into the accounting field and the Chinese context, which is helpful to better understand the relationship among OESIC, UAB and Confucian ShiZhong Thinking. This paper can enlighten organizational managers to consider the role of informal management control systems in restraining UAB and to pay attention to the two types of UAB with different motivations, especially UPOAB.
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