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This paper examines how middle managers experienced the implementation and development of an ethics and compliance program. Based on semi-structured interviews and archival data, it shows how the program evolved in a context of regulatory reform and intense stakeholder pressure in Brazil. In 2015, the program was characterized by a coercive environment featuring strict rules and procedures, internal investigations, and an unprecedented sanctioning system. It was consolidated through major changes in key organizational processes, especially centralization of procurement processes and segregation of duties. In 2019, middle managers experienced a new phase in the program's development, characterized by an approach that advocated the moral development of employees. This paper argues that middle managers play three roles in the development of an ethics and compliance program under intense stakeholder pressure--pathfinder, investigator, and promoter. It contributes to a better understanding of ethics and compliance programs as dynamic processes and to the roles played by middle management in their development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a work lens to examine a multinational company's purposeful actions to communicate the expansion of an ethics and compliance program after a massive corruption scandal. It draws on the notion of communication as symbolic management, which offers a window into program implementation, to analyze what we call identification work--the top-down, sensegiving process through which organizational leaders construct a collective sense of self and present it to organizational members and external stakeholders to restore their organization's legitimacy. Identification work makes extensive use of various discursive resources to reduce uncertainty as well as to evoke social, relational, and personal identification. This paper also mobilizes the concept of ventriloquism to explain the constitutive power of communication and how the company gives voice to key human and non-human actors such as regulators, civil society organizations, the media, and its ethics and compliance program. We have found that the company's ethics and compliance program is at the center of its newly-constructed sense of self, which is presented to both organizational members and external stakeholders as human-like, assuming a heroic quality strongly supported by symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compliance programs are promoted as effective solutions to corruption in organizations. Compliance programs, also known as ethics and compliance programs, ethics programs, and integrity programs, are widely adopted by organizations across the world, but their ability to effectively curb corruption is largely disputed. Current research mainly focuses on compliance programs as sets of organizational self-regulatory practices dissociated from wider country and sectoral anti-corruption initiatives. This article reviews and critiques the multidisciplinary literature on compliance programs. The literature reveals that anti-corruption regulation is the main driver of compliance programs, but little attention is paid to corruption as the organizational issue that compliance programs are expected to solve. This review discusses how compliance practices are informed by two dominant theoretical approaches to explaining corruption (based on principal-agent theory and collective action theory) and the implications for research and organizational practice. This review concludes by proposing a shift towards situated, problem-driven organizational strategies that take into account the challenge to tackling specific instances of corruption, the processual character of compliance programs, and the interplay of social structure and individual agency in different phases of the process of design, implementation, and maintenance of such programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Petrobras is an oil and gas giant publicly traded in Brazil and in international stock markets such as the New York Stock Exchange. The company's main shareholder is Brazil's federal government. Political influence is at the center of Petrobras' implication in a massive corruption scheme revealed in 2014. Brazilian Federal Police's Operation Car Wash disclosed a wide corruption scheme involving Petrobras, members of the Brazilian public administration, and some of the top construction firms in the country. The case focuses on describing how corruption practices spread at Petrobras as well as on the company's responses to the crisis initiated in March 2014. In the months that followed the scandal, former Petrobras executives involved in the scheme agreed to plea bargains and thus helped reveal an intricate network of corruption practices, including complex forms of bid rigging and bribery. Meanwhile, Petrobras announced the intention to create a Governance, Risk, and Compliance unit that would be in charge of various compliance initiatives. On the other hand, the company expressly denied liability and portrayed itself as a victim of the scheme. Based on rich information from the Car Wash scandal, the case addresses the following questions: what is organizational corruption and what are the main assumptions underlying the design and implementation of anti-corruption strategies?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circular economy is opposed to a linear model of mass production and mass consumption and is promoted as a model that could offer a wide array of opportunities for organizations, even though turning its principles into reality poses a number of challenges. Despite its potential, research on how the circular economy concept translates into organizational strategies, business models, and managerial practice is still limited. Indeed, organizations and management scholarship do not seem to have incorporated it into a comprehensive research agenda. This study attempts to give a meaningful contribution in that direction. By systematically reviewing literature on circular economy from 2010 to 2019, this research examines how this emerging concept is translated into organizational strategies, business models, and managerial practice and the roles played by business organizations in its implementation. Moreover, we examine how opportunities and challenges are addressed in the adoption of circular strategies and business models. Based on our findings, the paper concludes with a proposed agenda for research that might contribute to advancing knowledge on the circular economy concept and its organizational, managerial, and policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the persistence of corrupt practices within organizations despite increasing expenses on compliance policies, systems, and measures. Formal control systems designed to prevent unethical and illegal behavior have become a widespread practice. However, research suggests that costly, sophisticated anti-corruption strategies have not been achieving their desired outcomes. From a theoretical stance, different perspectives and bodies of literature have been brought forward to understand organizational corruption as a systemic and synergistic phenomenon. Nonetheless, research on the integration between antecedents, processes, and consequences of organizational corruption remains limited. This study critically reviews knowledge on normalized organizational corruption by integrating extant literature on the antecedents and processes of organizational corruption and on organizational response to corruption. As a result, I introduce a number of research questions, whose answers might lead to the development of a theory of organizational corruption persistence, with relevant implications for organizational practice and policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]