Corporate Political Activity and Bribery in Africa: Do Internet Penetration and Foreign Ownership Matter?

Tahiru Liedong; Daniel Aghanya; Alfredo  Jimenez; Tazeeb Rajwani

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113326

Corporate Political Activity and Bribery in Africa: Do Internet Penetration and Foreign Ownership Matter?

Tahiru Liedong, Daniel Aghanya, Alfredo Jimenez, Tazeeb Rajwani

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7 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

There is significant research on the outcomes of corporate political activity (hereafter CPA). However, despite a few prior studies acknowledging the negative externalities of political activity, little attention has been paid to CPA’s dark side. In this paper, we draw on institutional and corporate governance insights to examine the relationship between CPA and bribery, which is arguably the greatest institutional failure in developing countries. Using pooled data from over 25,000 firms in 41 African countries, we find that lobbying and firm-level bribery are positively related. This relationship is weakened by in-country internet penetration and foreign ownership of firms. Taken together, the results suggest that business-government relations in weak institutional environments help to perpetuate corruption. They also suggest that internet penetration and foreign ownership help to illuminate the dark side of CPA. Leveraging this understanding, we make important contributions to the literature and highlight pertinent practical implications.

Original language	English
Article number	113326
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of Business Research
Volume	154
Early online date	26 Sept 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113326
Publication status	Published - Jan 2023

Bibliographical note

© 2022, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

This document is the author’s post-print version, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer-review process. Some differences between the published version and this version may remain and you are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.

Funder

The authors are grateful to Guest Editor Prof. Jeoung Yul Lee and the anonymous reviewers for their guidance and constructive feedback. Alfredo Jiménez acknowledges that this publication is part of the I + D + i project PID2019-104408 GB-I00, funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/.

Keywords

Corporate political activity
bribery and corruption
institutions
developing countries
Africa

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113326

Aghanya2022AAMAccepted author manuscript, 1.55 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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title = "Corporate Political Activity and Bribery in Africa: Do Internet Penetration and Foreign Ownership Matter?",

abstract = "There is significant research on the outcomes of corporate political activity (hereafter CPA). However, despite a few prior studies acknowledging the negative externalities of political activity, little attention has been paid to CPA{\textquoteright}s dark side. In this paper, we draw on institutional and corporate governance insights to examine the relationship between CPA and bribery, which is arguably the greatest institutional failure in developing countries. Using pooled data from over 25,000 firms in 41 African countries, we find that lobbying and firm-level bribery are positively related. This relationship is weakened by in-country internet penetration and foreign ownership of firms. Taken together, the results suggest that business-government relations in weak institutional environments help to perpetuate corruption. They also suggest that internet penetration and foreign ownership help to illuminate the dark side of CPA. Leveraging this understanding, we make important contributions to the literature and highlight pertinent practical implications. ",

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Corporate Political Activity and Bribery in Africa: Do Internet Penetration and Foreign Ownership Matter?

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funder

Keywords

UN SDGs

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