Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (shrink)

Institutional and resource dependence theories point at the roles of government and peers’ behavior as determinants of firms’ social behavior. This is tested in this research, with important implications for both theory and practice. Using data from a national survey of Chinese private small- and medium-sized enterprises in 2008, this paper examines the role of government intervention in corporate philanthropy, as well as the moderation effect of peers’ giving. Results show that government intervention, when using a Marketization Index as a (...) measure, increases CP. In addition, the community peers’ giving enhances the positive effect of government intervention on SMEs’ giving. But the moderation effect of industry peers’ giving is generally not supported except when CP is measured as giving-to-sales. In general, community peers appear to be a clear reference for SMEs and, in relation to government intervention, exert a dominant isomorphic influence. The findings provide strong support to the neo-institutional theory perspective on philanthropy. Important theoretical and practical implications are suggested. (shrink)

Corruption as a non-market strategy for firms has gained increasing attention in the field of strategy management. However, the effect of corruption on innovation is unclear, especially in the context of transition economies. Using institutional theory, we examine the relationship between corruption and new product innovation and identify the contextual conditions of the relationship. Using the World Bank Enterprise Survey data from China, our empirical results show that corruption has a positive effect on firms’ new product innovation. Moreover, we find (...) that policy instability and competitive threats from the informal sector positively moderate the relationship between corruption and new product innovation. Using post hoc analysis, we find that the potentially positive effect of corruption on new product innovation is the consequence of inherent institutional weaknesses in transition economies; as the level of institutional development increases, the effect of corruption on firms’ new product innovation will gradually decrease. Overall, our findings provide new insights into understanding corrupt behaviors in transition economies and present managerial implications for firms’ ethical dilemmas in a transition economy context. We argue that the key to overcoming these ethical dilemmas lies in promoting pro-market institutional reform to reduce the potential benefits of corruption. (shrink)

Using a nationwide survey of provincial institutional quality and a sample of private manufacturing small and medium scale enterprises, this paper contributes to the literature by considering for the first time the effects of corruption on the financial performance of Vietnamese private SMEs. Interestingly, contrary to previous findings, we find that corruption when measured by a dummy variable, does not affect firms’ financial performance after controlling for heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity. However, the intensity of bribery and the majority of (...) the forms of corruption were found to have negative impacts on firms’ financial performance. Hence, a typical approach using only a dummy variable for bribery might not adequately evaluate the impact of bribe intensity or even ignores the negative impacts of some types of bribes on firms’ financial performance. The findings suggest that anti-corruption measures are vital for the development of the Vietnamese private SMEs. (shrink)

Economic openness, both in terms of increased international trade exposure and enhanced inter-firm networking, has been a key element of China’s economic emergence since the implementation of market reforms and the “opening-up policy” over 30 years ago. Unfortunately, these changes have also coincided with the increased incidence of bribery and corruption. Both in general, and in the specific context of China, research on the relationship between a firm’s tendency toward openness and its propensity to engage in bribery is scarce. This (...) study seeks to fill this gap based on empirical evidence provided by a large sample of Chinese firms. The findings of the study reveal that firms’ increased networking and openness tend to occur contemporaneously with greater bribery and corruption. We suggest that this may be due to the misuse of guanxi-based networks that coincide with the presence of firms’ open network strategies, heightened by the potential loss of resource and capability heterogeneity (and hence reduced competitive advantages) in the context of openness. We further find that firms paying bribes do so as an attempt to overcome unnecessary bureaucratic processes and ineffective institutional support that might tend to hinder their development. (shrink)

This article examines whether (1) government intervention causes bribery (or corruption) as rent-seeking theory suggested; (2) a firm’s perceived benefit partially mediates the relationship between government intervention and its bribing behavior, as rational choice/behavior theory suggested; and (3) other firms’ bribing behavior moderates the relationship between government intervention and a firm’s perceived benefit. Our study shows that government intervention causes bribery/corruption indeed, but it exerts its effect on bribery/corruption through the firm’s perceived benefit. In other words, a firm’s perceived benefit (...) fully mediates the relationship between government intervention and its bribing behavior. We also find that other firms’ bribery positively moderates the relationship between government intervention and a given firm’s bribery. This study partly proves that firms are rational actors. Potential benefit encourages them to practice bribery. Besides, this research also supports the rent-seeking view of bribery/corruption, which argues that government intervention is a source of bribery/corruption. However, we have also identified that only those government interventions that will create “rent” can cause bribery/corruption. (shrink)