Data Driven Insights 8: What Would a 'Good' CEO Do? #Social #Norms and #Corporate #Leadership

In a recent study with Professor Amon Chizema (University of Birmingham), we found that #political #leadership shapes the #corporate leadership #culture. The world craves #credible and #sincere leadership. Our policies need to shift from #financial and #legal solutions of the corruption problem to influencing leadership #values and #culture at all levels of the #society. We need to work on organisational #culture. We found that just asking leaders to think of «what would a good leader do» decreases the propensity of #bribery & #taxevasion a lot more than imposing penalties, increasing #legal #punishment or changing #financial #incentives.

To understand what drives corporate leaders to choose certain #corporategovernance practices there is need to look beyond the individual traits of the #leader, examining the effect of the elements of the institutional environment on managerial decisions. Drawing on the contextual approach to #leadership and insights from institutional theory, this study examines the impact of #government #integrity on corporate governance practices. From the field study, we find that #governmentintegrity has a positive causal effect on corporate leaders' corporate #governance decisions and choices. The positive impact of government integrity on corporate leaders' actions is also confirmed using a laboratory study, showing that a social norm of promoting leadership integrity, positively impacts on #corporateresponsibility especially in contexts where the government lacks #credibility. Specifically, we find that #corruption and #bribery by #corporateleaders is low in contexts that are #transparent and high in contexts with low government integrity.