Study goals
Analyze the relationship between culture and ethical behavior, and the interaction with search for legitimacy firms’ actions
Relevance / originality
Although national culture and ethical behavior has been studied in the literature, there is still not significant contribution on how the search for legitimacy (through the institutional theory approach) can impact this relationship.
Methodology / approach
Our sample is comprised of 30,240 firms acquired through secondary data from the World Bank and the national cultural dimensions were obtained from the GLOBE Project. We employed multiple regression analyzes to test our hypotheses.
Main results
We identified that ethical behavior has positive associations with institutional collective, uncertainty avoidance, future orientation, and gender egalitarianism; and negative associations with performance orientation and humane orientation. Also, search for legitimacy firms’ actions is a strong moderator in several of those relationships.
Theoretical / methodological contributions
We show that institutional theory, through the search for legitimacy firms’ actions, can have implications in the relationship between culture and ethical behavior. Futhermore, we show how the institutional theory lens can enlighten the studies of ethical behavior.
Social / management contributions
Managers should be aware that, besides national culture, firms’ search for legitimacy can have an impact on ethical behavior. Thus, we advise that managers should be conscientious regarding the firms’ actions that can onset search for legitimacy, thus influencing business ethics.