BUS 271: Business Communication

Ethics - Corporate Scandals: Bibliography

Scholarly

Barkemeyer, R., Faugère, C., Gergaud, O., & Preuss, L. (2020). Media attention to large-scale corporate scandals: Hype and boredom in the age of social media. Journal of Business Research, 109, 385-398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.011

• We investigate how media attention to large-scale corporate scandals has changed over time, and how the clustering of different scandals alters media attention to individual scandals. Building on the literature on media agenda-setting, we examine quality newspaper coverage for a sample of 123 major corporate scandals between 1990 and 2016. Whilst previous studies have typically examined specific corporate scandals in isolation, we find that the interplay of scandals is characterized both by crowding-in processes (or hype effects) – which predominantly occur when scandals fall into different categories – and crowding-out processes (or boredom effects) – which dominate when scandals are of one and the same category. Over time, and reflecting the emergence of social media, we find substantial changes in attention patterns, where more recent scandals have attracted significantly higher peaks of attention followed by a much steeper decline.

Clemente, M., & Gabbioneta, C. (2017). How does the media frame corporate scandals? The case of German newspapers and the Volkswagen diesel scandal. Journal of Management Inquiry, 26(3), 287-302. https://doi.org/10.1177/1056492616689304

• Despite the importance that the media has in regard to influencing people’s perceptions of wrongdoing, organizational scholars have paid little attention to how the media reports wrongdoing. This article starts to address this gap by considering how the media frames corporate scandals. We empirically examine how four different German newspapers reported on the Volkswagen diesel scandal. We inductively identify the constitutive elements of a general corporate scandal frame. Then, we analyze how each newspaper framed the scandal through combinations of different elements. We identify from our dataset four frames of corporate scandals that newspapers applied: legalistic, contextual, reputational, and scapegoating. Our article testifies to the importance of cross-fertilization between research on mass communication and political science on one side, and organizational research on the other side and, more generally, it calls for more attention to be given to the media in the study of scandals and organizational wrongdoing.

Soltani, B. (2014). The anatomy of corporate fraud: A comparative analysis of high profile American and European corporate scandals. Journal of Business Ethics, 120(2), 251-274. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1660-z

• This paper presents a comparative analysis of three American (Enron, WorldCom and HealthSouth) and three European (Parmalat, Royal Ahold and Vivendi Universal) corporate failures. The first part of the analysis is based on a theoretical framework including six areas of ethical climate; tone at the top; bubble economy and market pressure; fraudulent financial reporting; accountability, control, auditing, and governance; and management compensation. The second and third parts consider the analysis of these cases from fraud perspective and in terms of firm-specific characteristics (ownership structure) and environmental context (coverage in media and academic literature, regulatory and corporate governance frameworks). The research analyses shed light on the fact that, despite major differences between Europe and U.S. in terms of political institutions, laws and regulations as well as managerial practices, there are significant similarities between six groups. The analysis also demonstrates that, the ethical dilemma has been coupled with ineffective boards, inefficient corporate governance and control mechanisms, distorted incentive schemes, accounting irregularities, failure of auditors, dominant CEOs, dysfunctional management behavior and the lack of a sound ethical tone at the top. Significant similarities were also observed in the analysis from the fraud triangle perspective. However, there are several major differences between the six corporate failure cases particularly with regard to ownership structure, coverage in media, and legal, regulatory and governance frameworks. This research study may have several academic and practical contributions, particularly because of multidisciplinary, international features, and comparative analyses used in the paper.

Zona, F., Minoja, M., & Coda, V. (2013). Antecedents of corporate scandals: CEOs' personal traits, stakeholders' cohesion, managerial fraud, and imbalanced corporate strategy. Journal of Business Ethics, 113(2), 265-283. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1294-6

• This study examines the antecedents of corporate scandals. Corporate scandals are defined as rare events occurring at the apex of corporate fame when managerial fraud suddenly emerges in conjunction with a significant gap between perceived corporate success and actual economic conditions. Previous studies on managerial fraud have examined the antecedents of illegal acts in isolation from strategic decisions and in terms of CEOs’ individual responses to the external context. This study frames the antecedents of corporate scandals in terms of the interplay of CEOs’ personal traits with corporate strategy and stakeholders’ cohesion. With this aim, this study builds on extant theory to examine the case of Banca Popolare di Lodi, an Italian bank involved in a corporate scandal in year 2005. The model contributes to advance understanding of the complex dynamics underlying the emergence of corporate scandals.

Practitioner

Popular

Sloan, A. (2009). Don't blame the SEC. Fortune, 159(1), 18. Full-text

You mean that Bernie Madoff? (2008, November 19). New York Times (Online). Full-text 

Practitioner 

Notes on economic fallacies and their authors: No. 2.--John Law and the Mississippi bubble. (1874). The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register, 9(5), 345. Full-text 

Popular

A.K.F. (1900, February 25).). The first great "panic": John law's historic banking and exploiting scheme. New York Times.    Full-text  

Finance and economics: Law of easy money; buttonwood. (2009). The Economist, 392(8644), 63. Full-text

The great Mississippi scheme. (1862). Scientific American, Vii.(22), 341. Full-text 

MacDonald, L. (2020, May 19). John Law's Mississippi Bubble and the plague of 1720: A rags to riches story for the ages. The Globe and Mail (Online). Full-text 

Scholarly

Maurer, V. G. (2009). Corporate social responsibility and the "divided corporate self": The case of Chiquita in Colombia. Journal of Business Ethics, 88(Suppl 4), 595-603. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0313-8

Popular

Budman, M. (2008). In a real banana republic. The Conference Board Review, 45(1), 96. Full-text

Colombia seeks extradition of eight in Chiquita scandal. (2007, March 21). Prince George Citizen. Full-text