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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether differences in media exposure regarding corporate corruption appear to influence companies’ anti-corruption disclosures. The authors also examine whether the level of press freedom in firms’ home countries affects disclosure and the impact of media exposure in different ways. Design/methodology/approach The authors use Transparency International’s 2012 ratings of anti-corruption disclosure by the 105 largest multinational firms in the world, press freedom assessments from the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, and media exposure measures based on a search using the Dow Jones Factiva database. The authors assess relations using regression analysis controlling for other firm-specific factors potentially impacting disclosure choices. Finally, the authors consider the potential effect of other country-level factors. Findings The results indicate that media exposure, using either an existence or an extensiveness measure, is positively related to differences in sample companies’ anti-corruption disclosures. The authors also find that disclosure is more (less) extensive where home country press freedom is less (more) restricted and that reduced press freedom appears to reduce the impact of media exposure on the disclosure. The authors further document that press freedom levels explain more difference in anti-corruption disclosures than other country-level factors potentially influencing the practice. Research limitations/implications Because the investigation is limited to very large international firms for a single year, the degree to which the findings apply to other companies and time periods cannot be assessed. Further, the authors cannot determine how the findings would hold using an alternative disclosure rating scheme. Finally, the authors do not assess whether differences in the source of media exposure impact the findings. Social implications The findings suggest that, to the extent that improved anti-corruption disclosure reflects greater corporate attention to corruption issues, the media may be a powerful player in addressing this social ill. Unfortunately, the results also indicate that media efforts may not be sufficient to bring about change in locations where the freedom of the press is limited. Further, the results suggest that disclosure appears to be a function of exposure to social and political exposures, and the authors therefore question whether it will actually lead to improved corruption performance. Originality/value The study is the first to consider the impacts of media exposure and press freedom on corporate social disclosures.

This paper analyses the relation between countries’ cultural characteristics and anti‐corruption disclosure. In particular, it extends prior research and examines whether country‐level secrecy also appears to impact differences in this type of disclosure, while controlling for factors previously shown to matter. Using Transparency International ratings of disclosures on anti‐corruption efforts by large multinational firms and an ordinal regression analysis, the paper documents that companies from more ‘secretive’ countries have significantly lower levels of anti‐corruption disclosure.

In this paper, we examine the investor response to the issuance of Transparency International's (TI) 2012 and 2014 Transparency in Corporate Reporting: Assessing the World's Largest Companies reports. Building on prior studies of political cost-inducing events in the environmental domain, we anticipate a negative market reaction, although we argue that the adjustment will be less severe for firms rated as having better anti-corruption disclosure. Focusing on a sample of U.S. companies to control for country-level effects and to allow for comparison with the prior environmental-themed studies, we document a significantly negative market reaction to the first TI report issuance. Although also negative, the market reaction to the 2014 report was not statistically significant. However, we also document that, as expected, market adjustments differ significantly across subgroups based on anti-corruption disclosure in both time periods. These results hold controlling for other factors potentially influencing investor perceptions of exposure to the report issuances. In general, our results are consistent with the prior studies and indicate that the market is savvy to political cost exposures arising from non-environmental events. The findings also suggest that TI's efforts may be increasing stakeholder pressure for corporate anti-corruption performance, but we caution that further investigation of the relation between disclosure and underlying performance in the corruption domain is warranted.

Collaborative robots are being increasingly used by manufacturing companies due to their potential to help companies cope with market volatility. Before introducing this technology, companies face the decision phase where they determine the investment feasibility. Decision models for cobot adoption can assist decision-makers in this task, but they require previous identification of decision criteria. Since existing literature overlooked this issue, this study aims to provide a list of decision criteria that can be considered in the cobot adoption decision process. These criteria were identified by a literature review of the benefits, advantages, and disadvantages of cobot adoption. Results show that flexibility, competitiveness, ergonomics, quality, safety, space, mobility, ease of programming, technical features, human-robot collaboration, and productivity are important aspects to consider when deciding whether to invest in cobots. The findings of this study provide a better understanding of the decision process for cobot adoption by listing decision criteria along with some indicators, which is an important input for the design of a decision-making process.