Corporate Sustainability by Combating Bribery: The Role of an Organisation Culture and Its Impact on the Organisation’s Performance

Abstract

There is an increasing trend in bribery practices among employees (corporate bribery), especially from emerging economies, where developed countries, including the USA, have enormous interests in various aspects of local and international trade. Therefore, this study aims to examine the influence of organisations’ culture and outcome orientation, as well as the stability culture dimensions of Organisation Culture Profile (OCP), in order to combat corporate bribery practices, as an aspect of corporate sustainability practices, and their subsequent impact on both organisational financial and non-financial performance. The study surveyed mid-to-top level managers of a total of 201 organisations from Bangladesh. The survey data were used to develop a structural equation model (SEM) by utilising the AMOS (26th version) software, and thus tested the developed hypotheses on the study variables. The findings provide evidence of the positive influence of the two dimensions (outcome orientation and stability) of organisations’ culture in combating bribery practices within organisations. The findings highlight the positive impact of combating bribery practices on both organisations’ financial and non-financial performance. Our empirical findings contribute to the existing limited bribery-related corporate sustainability literature, with the goal of achieving suitable organisation culture in order to minimise unethical business practices, specifically bribery practices. The findings provide practical implications for practitioners and policymakers due to the discovery of the importance of having congenial corporate culture, in order to promote and enhance corporate sustainability practices by reducing the likelihood of poor practices by employees, i.e., taking or offering bribes to business partners.