Tone at the Top for Sustainable Corporate Governance to Prevent Fraud

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a systematic literature review of sustainable corporate governance to prevent fraud through the tone at the top perspective. In recent years, studies on corporate governance and sustainability have considerably increased. The main aspects of the intersection of these fields were analyzed, especially considering the role of fraud and risk management. Indeed, corporate fraud can hinder corporate sustainability goals. However, to remove fraudulent behavior, rules of conduct, formal recommendations, or the implementation of business ethics programs are often insufficient. In this sense, corporate ethics linked to governance has been referred to as “tone at the top”. Given the significant progress in this area and the lack of a generally accepted theory, an exhaustive organization of the research is needed. Based on these assumptions, this study employed text network analysis to systematically analyze the research contributions collected from the Scopus database for the period 1990–2021. This study establishes networks using the main information of scientific contributions, such as “Abstract”, “Title”, and “Keywords”, and performs analyses, such as co-occurrence and content analyses. The main findings highlight the growing importance of corporate governance in sustainability and propose the emerging role of tone at the top as one of the main drivers of corporate governance sustainability to prevent fraud. We conclude by suggesting some insights derived from the study. The results could be useful for both the academic and professional communities, offering an opportunity for future research.