Corruption-risk interdependencies between managerial roles and business partners and their implications for competitiveness
Ján Závadský, Zuzana Závadská, Eva Hoke
Keywords:
business associates, competitiveness, corruption risks, managerial roles, ISO 37001, performance evaluation
Abstract:
This study investigates how corruption-risk architectures inside firms and across their partner networks create implicit channels that affect organizational competitiveness. We develop two ISO 37001–consistent indicators, the job position corruption risk number (JPCRN) and the business associate corruption risk number (BACRN), and examine their linear dependencies in Slovak 18 ISO 37001–certified organizations. Our cross-sectional design uses organization-provided 1–5 risk ratings for decision-making managerial roles and for business associates with annual contracts >€100,000, from which we compute COUNTJP, COUNTRJP, %RJP_JP, AVG_JPCRN, COUNTBA, and AVG_BACRN. Dependencies are tested with Spearman correlations, complemented by size-stratified representativeness checks (χ²). Results show strong positive association between total managerial roles and the count of medium/high-risk roles (r = 0.93), negative association between managerial size and the share of risky roles (r = −0.76), no material link between headcount and average internal risk (r = 0.106), modest co-movement between average internal and associate risks (r = 0.20) and independence between managerial size and partner breadth (r = −0.014). It implies that competitiveness is threatened by the accumulation of risky approval nodes in larger structures and by concentration of pivotal risk in lean structures, while inside-outside co-movement calls for mirrored controls at the firm-partner boundary. The contribution is twofold: we provide auditable, ISO-aligned indicators that organizations can adopt, and we supply evidence on interdependencies that translate into actionable control priorities without modeling performance directly.
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 Corruption-risk interdependencies between managerial roles and business partners and their implications for competitiveness [PDF file] [Filesize: 731.16 KB]
 10.7441/joc.2026.03.02
Závadský, J., Závadská, Z., & Hoke, E. (2026). Corruption-risk interdependencies between managerial roles and business partners and their implications for competitiveness. Journal of Competitiveness, 16(3), 37–62. https://doi.org/10.7441/joc.2026.03.02
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