Operationalizing Integrity: Bribery, Managerial Capacity, and Ethical Decision-Making in Business Operations
Explore innovative research topic ideas on operationalizing integrity, addressing bribery, enhancing managerial capacity, and improving ethical decision-making in business operations for effective management.
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Realyn Manalo
5/28/20253 min read
In many organizations, bribery remains a hidden yet operationally disruptive practice. It distorts resource allocation, influences supply chain contracts, and undermines ethical decision-making across functions. In the Philippine business context—where firms often operate under variable institutional quality and regulatory enforcement—bribery is not just a legal issue, but a deeply embedded operational concern. Operations managers, compliance officers, and procurement teams face the challenge of balancing short-term gains with long-term risks as corrupt practices infiltrate routine decisions. There is an urgent need to examine how internal governance, managerial capability, and ethical culture influence whether firms resist or rationalize bribery, and how these choices shape overall operational performance.
Who Can Use These Topics
This research is ideal for students and professionals pursuing the following courses or strands:
College Programs:
BS in Business Administration major in Operations Management
BS in Management Accounting
BS in Business Analytics
BS in Public Administration
BS in Human Resource Management
BS in Industrial Engineering
Senior High School Strands:
Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS)
Accountancy, Business, and Management (ABM)
General Academic Strand (GAS)
Why This Topic Needs Research
From procurement to compliance and logistics, bribery disrupts operational logic and threatens sustainable performance. While several studies highlight financial or behavioral dimensions of corruption, core operational variables remain underexplored:
Lack of operational frameworks for undetected or suppressed bribery: Du Pon et al. (2024) showed that mid-tier managers are most likely to facilitate bribery, but their study did not assess how internal values, legal contexts, or monitoring gaps shape undetected corruption across operational chains.
No insight into how governance reforms reshape innovation-related bribery: Wu and Wang (2024) found that bribery can enhance performance under weak institutions, but they called for more research into how evolving governance or ethical shifts influence operational decisions about whether to bribe or innovate.
Underexplored variance in corruption impacts across conflict-free vs. conflict zones: While Dimitriadis (2024) showed that bribery supports firm survival in insurgency zones, the study did not examine whether similar logic holds under more stable, high-regulation conditions like those in the Philippines.
Unmeasured role of executive financial literacy in ethical decision-making: Ashoori et al. (2025) revealed that workforce size and growth correlate with bribery expenses, but future studies must assess whether financially literate managers are better equipped to identify and reject operational bribery offers.
No cross-cultural operations study on how ethics influence bribery strategy: Cheung et al. (2021) documented shareholder gains from bribery but emphasized the need to understand how cultural norms or managerial ethics influence operations-level justification and execution of such acts.
Missing link between governance systems and training decisions under bribery pressure: Boikos et al. (2023) found that on-the-job training is affected by bribery, but did not explore how internal governance mechanisms or managerial experience change operational trade-offs under corruption pressure.
No generalizability testing of rural anti-bribery frameworks: Arianto and Bakthiar (2023) proposed local solutions to bribery in village fund operations, but further research is needed to evaluate whether such practices apply to diverse rural settings and decentralized operational systems.
Feasibility & Challenges by Target Group
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References
Arianto, B., & Bakthiar, R. (2023). Effective Strategies for Preventing Bribery on Village Fund Management in Pandeglang Regency. ASSETS: Jurnal Akuntansi Dan Pendidikan, 12(1), 83-103.
Ashoori, S., Rezaei, A., & Mahdavi, S. (2025). Company Growth Factors, Workforce Size and Bribery Expenses (Perspective of Performance and Development of Companies). Учет. Анализ. Аудит, 12(1), 83-96.
Boikos, S., Pinar, M., & Stengos, T. (2023). Bribery, on-the-job training, and firm performance. Small Business Economics, 60(1), 37-58.
Cheung, Y. L., Rau, P. R., & Stouraitis, A. (2021). What determines the return to bribery? Evidence from corruption cases worldwide. Management Science, 67(10), 6235-6265.
Dimitriadis, S. (2024). Bribery, insecurity, and firm performance: Evidence from the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria. Strategic Management Journal, 45(6), 1061-1086.
Du Pon, A. W., Scheetz, A. M., & Zhang, Z. (2024). The Role of Managerial Ability in Bribery and Operational Performance: Evidence from FCPA Violations. Journal of Forensic Accounting Research, 1-33.
Wu, R., & Wang, N. (2024). The mixed effects of innovation strategies and bribery on firm performance: A Re-investigation via institutional quality. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 224, 438-462.