To what extend does the institutional context in which a multinational corporation is operating influence the quality of its anti-corruption programme?

In the last few years, the headline news is often grabbed with massive corruption scandals implicating leaders of worldwide companies or institutions. Corruption impacts all the fields of society and constitutes a global issue by increasing inequalities. A multinational corporation is characterized by a multitude of institutional contexts because of its geographically dispersed activities. This thesis focuses on the impact of this diversity of institutional contexts on the quality of anti-corruption programmes of multinational corporations. In order to answer this research question, we created a linear model composed of a dependant variable that is the quality of anti-corruption programme, a moderation variable that is the exposition of the multinational in its headquarters and a control variable that is the influence of the controversy of the sector in which the multinational is operating. In order to confirm or not our hypothesis, we computed a dataset with data coming from the worldwid NGO Transparency International and Thomson-Reuters database. The theory we are using is the institutional theory which states that the institutional environment shapes the behaviour of social actors. It is composed both of formal and informal institutions. Corruption appears when formal institutions are weak and are not able to provide basic services for the population. Therefore, they create informal institutions to substitute the inefficient formal institutions. There are three processes through which the practices become institutionalized in a society: coercive, normative, and regulatory isomorphisms. Corruption is an informal institution that appears mainly due to the interaction between national officials and other social actors. We discovered that some contexts are more prone to corruption, because of the weakness of the legal system they are facing, such as low probabilities of being caught or low sanctions. Thus, actors do not hesitate in committing such acts. Our results show that the institutional environment exerts a significant and positive influence over the anti-corruption programmes of multinational corporations and that in some countries, corruption is deeply institutionalized in the informal institutions, in the culture and habits of people, whereas in some others corrupt practices are not frequent. Corruption is mainly present in emerging and developing countries with weaker formal institutions, which inefficiently support population needs, since institutions are weak and public money is misused by officials. The results also show that the more a multinational is exposed in a country, the stronger is the positive relationship between the quality of its anti-corruption programme and its institutional context. And finally, since the companies know that they are operating in controversial sector, which is dangerous for their external image, they are compliant towards existing regulations against corruption or they take the adequate measures, for their reputation not to be hurt by corruption scandals.Master [120] en Ingénieur de gestion, Université catholique de Louvain, 201