Corruption as Corporate Entrepreneurship

This chapter—“Corruption as Corporate Entrepreneurship”—continues with the dark side of entrepreneurial action in response to chronic adversity but in the government context. While corruption exists in most countries, it is widespread in the developing world, acting like sand in the wheels of economies and harming the performance of businesses, especially small businesses. Along these lines, this chapter focuses on bribery in the developing world from the perspective of government officials asking for and receiving bribes. We discuss how in corrupt systems, such officials deliberately make government departments more bureaucratic by creating informal autonomous ventures within these departments. Through such corrupt ventures, these actors use informal human resource management systems to create and maintain corruption. Moreover, we detail how corrupt government officials see new legal constraints as opportunities to use brokers to facilitate bribery. Thus, in this chapter, we outline how actors use corrupt informal autonomous ventures to engage in and maintain corruption within the government and how these entrepreneurial practices, in turn harm governments, small businesses, and people’s confidence in their nations.