Corruption in supply chains is an important but poorly understood phenomenon that prevents supply chains from achieving their desired sustainability performance. Drawing from the literature on sustainable supply chain management, and corruption, this paper explores the antecedents, dynamics, and consequences of corruption in the Brazilian beef supply chain. Supply chains in emerging economies face a significant risk from both “petty” and “grand” corruption, and this makes criminal activity more difficult to disrupt. This research makes four contributions to theory, policy, and practice: (1) it fills an important gap in the literature by explicitly connecting the sustainable supply chain management perspective to the corruption discourse; (2) it advances the sustainable supply chain management literature by suggesting that stakeholder collaboration might not be always a “good thing” because in some cases it may increase the risk of corruption; (3) it suggests that corruption might be embedded in certain types of supply chain relationships which form a “corruption triangle”; (4) it identifies implications for the practice of supply chain management and provides insights for policy makers and regulators/law enforcers on how to identify and disrupt supply chain corruption scams.

供应链中的腐败是一个重要的但知之甚少的现象，它阻止了供应链实现其预期的可持续性表现。本文从有关可持续供应链管理和腐败的文献中汲取了经验，探讨了巴西牛肉供应链中腐败的前因，动态和后果。新兴经济体的供应链面临着“小规模”腐败和“大腐败”腐败的巨大风险，这使得犯罪活动更难以被破坏。这项研究对理论，政策和实践做出了四点贡献：（1）通过将可持续供应链管理的观点与腐败话语明确地联系起来，填补了文献中的一个重要空白；（2）通过暗示利益相关者的协作可能并不总是一件“好事”，因为它在某些情况下可能增加腐败的风险，从而推动了可持续供应链管理的发展；（3）它表明，腐败可能嵌入某些类型的供应链关系中，从而形成“腐败三角”；（4）它确定了对供应链管理实践的影响，并为决策者和监管者/执法者提供了有关如何识别和破坏供应链腐败骗局的见解。