The how, where, and what of organizational corruption: an integrative literature review

Research on organizational corruption has been approached from different perspectives. However, there is still a lack of a more comprehensive focus on the intersection of public and private management. This article presents a review of 589 academic studies. The predominance of quantitative research suggests the need for a more balanced approach that incorporates qualitative and mixed methods, enabling a deeper investigation of organizational corruption. Furthermore, studies on corruption published in top-ranked English-language journals are mainly concentrated in the northern hemisphere. This methodological dominance shows the need to broaden the scope of the investigations to include the southern hemisphere in these publications. Another aspect observed was the lack of empirical studies and the need to understand corruption as a multidimensional phenomenon. Future research must emphasize primary data analysis to generalize and validate corruption theories.