**1. Introduction**

Organisations in the twenty-first century are under tremendous pressure from various stakeholders to operate and run organisations in a sustainable manner so that the interests of organisations' stakeholders are preserved without harming the interests of future stakeholders [1–3]. Although corporate sustainability is now being treated by many organisations, especially those from developed countries, as a strategic priority, its practice, especially from the ethical business practice perspective, is less likely to be observed by companies in developing and underdeveloped countries. More specifically, there is an increasing trend of unethical business practices, such as taking and/or offering bribes and small

**Citation:** Rahman, M.M.; Bhuiyan, F.; Samaduzzaman, M.; Mia, P.; Mahmood, I. Corporate Sustainability by Combating Bribery: The Role of an Organisation Culture and Its Impact on the Organisation's Performance. *Sustainability* **2023**, *15*, 6557. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su15086557

Academic Editor: Roberta Costa

Received: 13 February 2023 Revised: 10 March 2023 Accepted: 21 March 2023 Published: 12 April 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

felicitations for business operations by employees in developing and under-developed countries, such as Bangladesh, SriLanka and Pakistan [4–7]. According to the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), more than two thirds of 180 countries across the globe failed to prevent corruption, while Bangladesh has been ranked 147th out of the 180 countries [8]. More specifically, bribery is a common practice for businesses in Bangladesh, especially in utilities, tax payments and external trades [9]. Similarly, according to the 2022 TRACE Bribery Risk Matrix, which measures business bribery risk in 194 jurisdictions, Bangladesh has been ranked 153rd out of 194 countries across the world, with a high-risk score of 64 [10]. Consequently, overall sustainable business practices seem poor across the world, and in Bangladesh in particular. Although the existing sustainability literature has paid relatively more attention to the different aspects of sustainability practices, such as the environmental and economic aspects, less attention has been paid to the bribery aspect of sustainable business practices. Specifically, there is a limited understanding of what factors could minimise unethical business practices (bribery practices) and how they could do so, and could thus promote sustainable practices. Given the multifarious consequences of bribery practices, it is now important to identify and examine the factors preventing and minimising bribery practices in the corporate environment. Therefore, this study aims to examine the factor/s that may be useful in preventing bribery practices by employees in developing countries, and thus shed light on the aforementioned research gap.

It is evident that organisational culture has a substantial impact on business operations, practices, achieving business objectives and performance [11–13]. Organisational culture evolves and is established within an organisation or any component of an organisation over time, and guides and coordinates members' behaviour and holds the organisation together [6,14,15]. It shapes employees' behaviour within the organisation in performing their regular duties. Moreover, conducive organisational culture is directly linked to the morale of employees, which may be a driving force to combat bribery practices within organisations. Previous studies have examined the influence of organisational culture on organisational practices and state its importance for the successful implementation of a variety of organisational practices and changes [12,16]. However, how organisational culture is associated with corporate sustainability practices has been paid little attention in the sustainability literature [17]. Hence, this study addresses the research question: "Does organisational culture influence corporate sustainability practices, such as combating corporate bribery practices?". Accordingly, this study aims to examine the influence of organisational culture (outcome orientation and stability culture dimensions of (O'Reilly et al., 1991) [18] the Organisational Culture Profile (OCP) on combating bribery practices.

Provided that the achievement of an organisation's objectives is the key to its sustainability practices, as well as the growing interests of different stakeholders in developing insights into the impact of sustainability practices on organisational performance, it is important to develop insights into what is the impact of corporate sustainability practices on an organisation's performance. Although researchers have examined the impact of corporate sustainability practices on organisational performance [19], combating the bribery aspect of sustainability has been paid little attention. Accordingly, this study aims to further examine the impact of corporate sustainability, focusing on combating the bribery aspect and how this has an effect on organisational financial and non-financial performance. It is thus hoped to minimise the paucity of research on the antecedents of sustainability practices, and the relationship between sustainability practices and organisational performance [20].

The findings of this empirical study contribute to the existing limited bribery-related corporate sustainability literature, with the role of suitable corporate culture in minimising unethical business practices: minimising bribery practices and the impact of such practices on an organisation's financial and non-financial performance. The findings of this study contribute to the relevant literature in the following ways: first, it empirically exhibits the influence of an organisation's culture (outcome orientation and stability in particular) to combat bribery practices, and thus promote corporate sustainability practices, and thereby contribute to the limited literature in the field of interest. Second, this study provides empirical evidence of the impact of corporate sustainability practices on both organisational financial and non-financial performance. Third, the findings of this study provide policymakers with empirical insights into the antecedents of combating bribery practices, which can be useful for promoting corporate sustainability practices and its subsequent impact on the organisation's financial and non-financial performance.

The remainder of this study is arranged as follows: Section 2 highlights the literature review and hypotheses of the study. Section 3 discusses the method of the study, including sample selection and data collection, variable measurements, and common method biases. In Section 4, the empirical results are reported along with the robustness and endogeneity check. Section 5 concludes the study.

#### **2. Literature Review and Hypothesis Development**

#### *2.1. Corporate Culture and Its Dimensions*

Corporate culture refers to "the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external and internal integration and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and is therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to these problems" [21] (p. 3). Researchers from different disciplines reveal different dimensions of corporate culture [3,14,22,23]. This study follows the way O'Reilly et al., 1991 [18], define corporate culture's dimensions. O'Reilly et al., 1991 [18], identify six different cultural dimensions, such as respect for people, outcome orientation, team orientation, innovation, attention to detail, and stability. The O'Reilly et al., 1991 [18], culture dimensions are popular to researchers from various disciplines [16,21,24–26]. This study focuses on two of the six dimensions of corporate culture, namely outcome orientation and stability culture, in order to examine their association with the bribery aspect of corporate sustainability practices. Outcome orientation culture refers to "the degree to which management focuses on results or outcomes rather than on the techniques, and the processes used to achieve them" [27] (p. 513) [28]. Stability culture is defined as "the degree to which organisational activities emphasise maintaining the status quo in contrast to growth" [27] (p. 513) [28].
