Exploring the motivations for corruption from a supply-side view in Chinese private procurement

Whereas extant theories on business corruption have highlighted the importance of exploring private-to-public corruption, we shift attention to private-to-private corruption. This paper provides a multilevel investigation of the motivations of supply chain corruption practices in private procurement in China from a supply-side perspective. Based on eight Chinese cases of supply chain corruption practices, we develop a theoretical model, which describes why companies engage in corrupt behaviors as a supply side of corruption. We show that the motivational drivers can be traced at two levels: the micro and meso levels. Drivers at the micro level include organizational imperatives (financial and reputational), rent-seeking behaviors, and keeping a long-term interorganizational relationship. Drivers at the meso level include competitive and coercive isomorphism and institutionalization. Our findings bridge the research gap by exploring the motivations of supply chain corruption from a supply-side view. We also extend the application of rent-seeking theory in a new context by using it to explain corruption in the private sector.