Business strategies and corruption in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises: The impact of business group affiliation, external auditing, and international standards certification

We examine the impact of three business strategies separately and in combination on tendency for firms to engage corruption. Using a sample 56,827 firm-year observations small- medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over 2006–2018 period, we find that with group affiliations are more likely corrupt practices countries low freedom. However, those high freedom less do so. also services external auditors adopt international standards be corrupt, especially weak financial reporting standards. Our results show corruption intensity reduces even employ strategies, whether consider institutional factors or not. This result holds when use three-way interaction term. conclude mutually reinforcing firm-level country-level efforts complement each other mitigating