• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.318-323
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• 2011

Illegal and unethical behaviors of the construction industry affect people's lives and health more than the same problems of the other industries. Among these behaviors, the construction industry is mostly criticized for bribery scandals. According to the survey of the Ministry of Justice in Taiwan over the past years, bribery cases involving public engineering projects and governmental procurements account for a rather large portion of the indicted corruption cases. Transparency International's "Bribe Payer Index" indicates people in construction-related industries are the most likely to pay bribes. Poor construction quality directly and indirectly caused by bribery poses a great threat to public safety, organizational reputation and economic development. However, there is a limited number of existing research on the bribery problem of the construction industry. This study is an empirical attempt to explore bribery intention and its affecting factors among the construction organizations in Taiwan by conducting a questionnaire survey. The theory of planned behavior was used in this study to build its research model (covering elements of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavior control, and intention). Totally 431 valid samples were returned. To explore the factors affecting bribery intention, this study adopted Pearson's correlation analysis to discuss about the connections among the questionnaire respondents' attitudes to bribery, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, and bribery intention. A multi-regression analysis was then conducted to test if the planned behavior theory can effectively predict bribery intention. The research found (1) according to the results of Pearson's correlation analysis, the respondents' bribery intention, attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control are positively correlated with one another; (2) according to the results of the multi-regression analysis, bribery intention can be explained through attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control with an adjusted R² value of 0.591, meaning 59.1% of the bribery intention's variances can be explained through the three dimensions. In addition, each of the three dimensions has a significant influence on the respondents' behavior intentions.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.309-316
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• 2020

This research aims to revisit the hypothesis that bribery hurts firm performance in the context of a perceptibly corrupt country. Specifically, we use micro-data from Vietnamese small and medium firm surveys in 2013 and 2015 to examine whether bribery impedes firm revenue growth and labor productivity growth. An issue arising in this type of research is the potential endogeneity between firm bribing behaviors and firm performance. To go around the issue, we follow the literature to instrument bribery variable with the average probability of bribery in other provinces. We further employ the Analysis of Variance technique (ANOVA) to unveil if the effect of bribery is dependent on bribing purposes. The regression results show that firm performance is significantly influenced by firm size, firm age and firm bribing behavior. Larger firms are more likely to grow faster while firm performance tends to be negatively related to firm age. Particularly, we find that bribery significantly impedes firm revenue growth and labor productivity growth. The analysis of variance shows that the effect of bribery on firm performance may vary across bribing purposes. Our findings, therefore, support the sand-the-wheels hypothesis that bribery hurts firm performance even in a highly corrupt business environment.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.259-268
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• 2020

This study aims to provide empirical evidence on the causal relationship between bribery and firm innovation. To this end, we use a micro-dataset of small and medium firms in Vietnam surveyed in 2015. Given the binary nature of the dependent variable, a simple probit regression model is employed. However, as bribery variable is potentially endogenous, a simple probit regression may give biased estimates. We deal with the potential endogeneity by making use of the bivariate probit model. A property of the bivariate probit model is that it can produce efficient estimates of a typical probit model with endogenous binary explanatory variable. A Hausman-like likelihood ratio test is implemented following the estimation to test the existence of endogeneity. We find that bribery significantly undermines firm innovation. Also, firms run by household appear less innovative. The probability of innovation diminishes significantly if firm owners or managers have previous experience in firm products. As expected, larger firms seem to be more innovative. Exporters tend to be more innovative compared to non-exporters. Our findings provide support to the hypothesis that bribery is detrimental to firm innovation and, thus, innovation may be a mediating channel, through which, bribery impedes firm long-term performance.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.253-273
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• 2014

The Korea-EU FTA has substantially escalated the volumes of South Korea's export and investment in the United Kingdom since its ratification. Coupling with the FTA effect, the ease of doing business in the United Kingdom will increase even more trade and investment by South Korean multinational corporations. In the meantime, the UK Bribery Act 2010 was enforced to end bribery by individuals and business entities which have close connection with the United Kingdom. The punishment of violating the Act is severe than ever because of "unlimited" fine. Without fully understanding the Act and have compliance measures as described in the Guidance issued by the UK Ministry of Justice, South Korean corporations may risk its whole business. Therefore, this paper will analyze the UK Bribery Act in details to provide critical implications for South Korean corporations under the Korea-EU FTA.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.95-104
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• 2020

Bribery is one of the world's most destructive and challenging issues. Yet despite efforts on national and international levels to tackle bribery, it remains a significant issue. Recognizing this, ISO has developed a new standard to help organizations fight bribery and promote an ethical business culture, which is "ISO 37001 - Anti-bribery Management Systems" in 2016. ISO 37001 can provide the tools and systems to greatly reduce the risk and help organizations deal with it effectively if it does arise. It is a flexible tool, which can be adapted according to the size and nature of the organization and the bribery risk it faces. After enforcing the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, Korean government standardized ISO 37001, one of the Business Ethics of Global Standard, harmonizing International Standards into Korean Industrial Standards (KS) in 2017. It is meaningful in that Korean companies have localized regulation which applies to global standard anti-bribery management systems. Only about 100 organizations, however, have adopted ISO 37001 so far. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the expectation and awareness of ISO 37001. Results show that still many organizations lack of awareness of ISO 37001 and it is implicated that much promotion and education will be necessary. This study has originality and value in that it can provide the guidelines for activation of ISO 37001.

• Journal of the Korea Management Engineers Society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.125-141
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• 2018

As global competition is intensifying, companies are entering not only developed markets but also emerging and developing countries. In emerging and developing countries, business-to-governmental relations are an essential factor influencing the firm performance. The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of corporate political activities on firm performance. Using the BEEPS data developed by the EBRD and the World Bank, the effect of various bribery activities regarded as corporate political activities on the firm performance was examined. Also, the moderating effect of competition type on the firm performance was proved. As the results, the bribery contribution, which is a corporate political activity, has a positive effect on the firm performance. Specifically, when infrastructure bribery occurred, costs and sales were higher, and when permission bribery was granted, profits, costs, and sales were higher. In addition, the effect of bribery as a corporate political activity on firm performance is moderated by competition type. These findings have academic and practical implications for empirical analyzing of SMEs' firm performance, guidelines suggestion for entry into the other countries, generalization possibility of using credible data, developing and designing export support systems and programs. Finally, limitations of the research and future research directions were discussed.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.73-82
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• 2020

'ISO 37001 - Anti-bribery Management Systems, one of the Business Ethics of Global Standards, is a new standard to help organizations fight bribery and promote an ethical business culture which was developed in 2016. ISO 37001 can provide the tools and systems to greatly reduce the risk and help organizations deal with it effectively if it does arise. After enforcing the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, Korean government standardized ISO 37001 harmonizing International Standards into Korean Industrial Standards (KS) in 2017. It is meaningful in that Korean companies have localized regulation which applies to global standard anti-bribery management systems. About 100 organizations have adopted ISO 37001 as in the first half of 2019. So far many side effects of other ISO certifications have been recognized. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the current status of ISO 37001 in Korea for effective operation and management. The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the current status and problems of ISO 37001 in Korea. It can provide useful guidelines for improving ISO 37001 to manage bribe and corruption effectively.

• Korean Architects
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• s.530
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• pp.79-79
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• 2013

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.123-149
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• 2021

Purpose The purpose of this study is to define the anti-ESG activities of companies recognized by media by reflecting ESG recently attracted attention. This study extracts keywords for ESG controversies through association rule mining. Design/methodology/approach A research framework is designed to extract keywords for ESG controversies as follows: 1) From DeepSearch DB, we collect 23,837 articles on anti-ESG activities exposed to 130 media from 2013 to 2018 of 294 listed companies with ESG ratings 2) We set keywords related to environment, social, and governance, and delete or merge them with other keywords based on the support, confidence, and lift derived from association rule mining. 3) We illustrate the importance of keywords and the relevance between keywords through density, degree centrality, and closeness centrality on network analysis. Findings We identify a total of 26 keywords for ESG controversies. 'Gapjil' records the highest frequency, followed by 'corruption', 'bribery', and 'collusion'. Out of the 26 keywords, 16 are related to governance, 8 to social, and 2 to environment. The keywords ranked high are mostly related to the responsibility of shareholders within corporate governance. ESG controversies associated with social issues are often related to unfair trade. As a result of confidence analysis, the keywords related to social and governance are clustered and the probability of mutual occurrence between keywords is high within each group. In particular, in the case of "owner's arrest", it is caused by "bribery" and "misappropriation" with an 80% confidence level. The result of network analysis shows that 'corruption' is located in the center, which is the most likely to occur alone, and is highly related to 'breach of duty', 'embezzlement', and 'bribery'.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.109-116
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• 2010

A construction project consists of many types of contracts. In the process of selecting the successful contractor after bidding, there will inevitably be fierce competition, which may lead to corruption or bribery. Even after signing the contract, during the period of settling the amount of the contract, bribery could occur. Such corruption could harm the development of the construction industry. It is, therefore, necessary to establish a strategy to prevent corruption by strengthening the transparency of the bidding process. In this study, to prevent corruption in the construction industry, a new service is proposed in which the successful bidder is selected by a professional third party, and the introduction of diverse delivery systems for construction projects and the invigoration of alternative methods of settling disputes are also proposed in this study.