The Bribery Paradox in Transition Economies and the Enactment of ‘New Normal’ Business Environments
研究挑战了贿赂能带来竞争优势的传统观点，发现频繁行贿的企业家长期会构建一个障碍重重的“新常态”商业环境，尤其对家族企业影响更大。基于22个转型经济体的310家中小企业数据验证。
Abstract We develop a novel, sense‐making perspective on corruption in transition economies. Prior research has focused on understanding why some entrepreneurs are more likely to pay bribes than others. It typically assumes that paying bribes will lead to an intended – albeit unfair – competitive advantage. We challenge this assumption and uncover a bribery paradox : drawing upon sense‐making logic, we argue that beyond gaining an immediate benefit from bribing, entrepreneurs who frequently pay bribes may in the longer run be enacting a ‘new normal’ business environment perceived as high in obstacles, especially in transition countries. As sense making is grounded in identity construction and one’s social context, we argue that owners of family firms will be especially vulnerable to the dangers of perceiving greater obstacles over time and enacting an obstacle‐ridden ‘new normal’ business environment. We find empirical support for our framework on a sample of 310 privately held small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) from 22 transition economies.