Despite calls for utilizing white-collar and corporate crime frameworks to study corruption, the role of corporations in supplying bribes to foreign government officials is not well understood. In the current study, we draw upon a recent framework designed to examine the transnational corporate bribery process from an opportunity theory perspective. We apply the framework to a sample of individuals and organizations with enforcement actions levied against them by the United States Department of Justice’s Fraud Section for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 between 2011 and 2016. Using an exploratory mixed methods approach, we assess the prevalence and qualitative nature of multiple components of the framework. Our goal is to develop a systematic way to apply it to different sets of bribery data and to move toward a fuller theoretical account of transnational corporate bribery. Our findings demonstrate the significance of the corporate role in foreign bribery, the utility of the bribery process framework, and some areas of refinement and future theoretical development.

尽管有人呼吁利用白领和公司犯罪框架来研究腐败现象，但人们对公司在向外国政府官员行贿中的作用尚不甚了解。在当前的研究中，我们借鉴了一个旨在从机会理论的角度研究跨国公司贿赂过程的最新框架。对于2011年至2016年间违反1977年《反海外腐败法》的行为，美国司法部反欺诈部门对个人和组织采取了执法行动，我们将该框架应用于样本。我们采用探索性的混合方法进行评估框架的多个组成部分的普遍性和定性。我们的目标是开发一种系统的方法，将其应用于不同的贿赂数据集，并朝着更全面的跨国公司贿赂理论进行解释。我们的发现证明了公司在外国贿赂中的作用，贿赂程序框架的效用以及一些完善和未来理论发展的意义。