Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-16-2016
Abstract
How do U.S. expatriate executives who live and work in countries with pervasive corruption make choices about the degree to which they participate in corruption? To answer this question, I interviewed 30 U.S. executives who worked in such countries. Some refused to participate in corrupt practices, others chose to reluctantly succumb to extortion, while others willingly participated in corruption. I illustrate costs the executives incur from making the decisions and reasons for why they make the decisions. I found that social norms played a significant role in their decisions. There are four social norms - personal norms (individuals' standards for behaviors and ethical beliefs), subjective norms (expectations of close others), injunctive norms (general societal expectations of behavior), and descriptive norms (what other people actually do). U.S. executives rely on personal norms and injunctive norms for deciding to refuse to participate in corrupt practices, on descriptive norms and subjective norms for deciding to reluctantly succumb to extortion, and on descriptive norms and personal norms for deciding to willingly participate in corruption. These findings help us understand what motivates U.S. executives to make decisions about participating in corruption when living and working in countries with pervasive corruption. This has implications for policy, research, and practice.
Keywords
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, executives, corruption, bribery, kickback, extortion, expatriates, social norms, personal norms, subjective norms, injunctive norms, descriptive norms
Rights
© The Author(s). This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Greppin, Carl H., "How U.S. Executive Expatriates Work in Environments of Pervasive Corruption" (2016). Student Scholarship. 247.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/247