By combining upper echelon theory with meso theory of management, this study investigates the relationship between both corporate and country corruption risk and the performance of CEOs, while controlling for a set of individual-level variables. We used a sample of 455 observations related to 249 listed companies from a list published by the Harvard Business Review of the world's best-performing CEOs, in both developed and emerging countries, over the 5-year period between 2013 and 2017. We implemented hierarchical linear models in a three-level approach based on country- (macro), firm- (meso), and individual-level (micro) variables. We found that corporate corruption risk negatively impacts CEO performance, although this relationship is also significantly moderated by the corruption risk at the country level. Our results support the view that corporate corruption prevention devices play a strong governance role in countries with high corruption risk. By exploring the interplay between these macro- and meso-factors in explaining the micro-level of CEO performance, our paper aims to build a contextualized meso-theory of corruption risk.

本研究通过将高层管理理论与管理中观理论相结合，在控制一组个人层面的变量的同时，研究了企业和国家腐败风险与 CEO 绩效之间的关系。我们使用了 2013 年至 2017 年 5 年期间《哈佛商业评论》发布的全球表现最佳 CEO 名单中与 249 家上市公司相关的 455 个观察样本样本。我们实施了分层基于国家（宏观）、公司（中观）和个人（微观）变量的三级方法中的线性模型。我们发现，公司腐败风险对 CEO 绩效产生负面影响，尽管这种关系也因国家层面的腐败风险而显着缓和。我们的结果支持这样一种观点，即企业预防腐败的设备在腐败风险高的国家发挥着强大的治理作用。通过探索这些宏观因素和中观因素在解释 CEO 绩效的微观层面上的相互作用，我们的论文旨在建立一个情境化的腐败风险中观理论。