Purpose

This paper builds upon managerial discretion literature to study the relationship between foreign ownership and bribery intensity.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on World Bank’s data of 9,386 firms from 125 countries over the period 2006–2018, this paper uses Tobit regression, ordered probit and logit models to empirically test the hypotheses.

Findings

This paper finds that firms have higher bribery intensity when executives have a higher level of managerial discretion. Smaller firms with slack financial resources tend to bribe more when they face more government intervention, munificent and uncertain industrial environment.

Originality/value

Extant corruption literature has addressed the effects of external institutional settings and internal corporate governance on bribery offering among multinational enterprises (MNEs). How much, and under what condition do top executives matter in bribery activities are yet to be answered. This paper integrates the concept of managerial discretion with corruption and bribery literature and offers a potential answer to the above question. In addition, prior corruption and bribery literature have primarily studied bribery through either micro- or macro-level analysis. This paper adopts multiple-level of analyses and elucidates the foreign ownership and bribery relationship from the organizational and industrial levels.

中文翻译：

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跨国企业什么时候行贿更多？管理自由裁量权的作用

目的

本文以管理自由裁量权文献为基础，研究外资所有权与贿赂强度之间的关系。

设计/方法论/途径

本文基于世界银行 2006 年至 2018 年期间来自 125 个国家的 9,386 家企业的数据，使用 Tobit 回归、有序概率和 Logit 模型对假设进行实证检验。

发现

本文发现，当高管拥有更高水平的管理自由裁量权时，公司的贿赂强度就更高。财务资源宽松的小企业在面临更多的政府干预、慷慨且不确定的产业环境时往往会更多地行贿。

原创性/价值

现有的腐败文献探讨了外部制度设置和内部公司治理对跨国企业（MNE）行贿行为的影响。高层管理人员在贿赂活动中发挥多大作用以及在什么条件下发挥作用尚待解答。本文将管理自由裁量权的概念与腐败和贿赂文献相结合，并为上述问题提供了一个潜在的答案。此外，先前的腐败和贿赂文献主要通过微观或宏观层面的分析来研究贿赂行为。本文采用多层次分析，从组织层面和产业层面阐释了外资所有权和贿赂关系。