The Mabey and Johnson bribery scandal: A case of executive hubris

• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Author: Jana Sajdakova,Kweku Adams,David Sarpong
• Date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.21989

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS THEORY AND APPLICATION

The Mabey and Johnson bribery scandal: A case of

executive hubris

David Sarpong

1

| Jana Sajdakova

2

| Kweku Adams

3

1

College of Business, Arts & Social Sciences,

Brunel Business School, Brunel University

London, Uxbridge, UK

2

Bristol Business School, University of the

West of England, Bristol, UK

3

York Business School, York St John

University, York, UK

Correspondence

David Sarpong, College of Business, Arts &

Social Sciences, Brunel Business School,

Brunel University London, Kingston Lane,

Uxbridge UB8 3PH, UK.

Email: david.sarpong@brunel.ac.uk

Convicted for paying bribes to secure contracts abroad, Mabey and Johnson (M&J), a UK con-

struction firm, made both legal and international business history. Drawing on hubris as a lens,

we examine M&J's bribery scandal in Ghana and Jamaica. Through a qualitative study of court

documents, witness statements, newspaper articles, and internal company emails, we unpack

the bribery scheme operated by M&J executives that enabled the firm to illegitimately win

major government contracts in Ghana and Jamaica. Fueled by executive hubris, M&J's practice

of bribing foreign officials to secure contracts effectively insulated M&J executives from day-to-

day realities. Over time, the firm's executives viewed themselves as infallible, exempt from

established mores, invincible, and were unremorseful for their actions. Building on these find-

ings, we develop a hubris-bribery heuristic framework showing how individual, organizational,

and institutional contexts constitutively fueled executive hubris, driving bribery at M&J. The

implication for theory and practice is examined.

KEYWORDS

bribery, corruption, executive hubris, Ghana, Jamaica, Mabey and Johnson

1|INTRODUCTION

Recent bribery and corruption scandals involving global firms like

Enron, Siemens, BAE systems, Daimler-Chrysler, Alcatel, and Volkswa-

gen show bribery and corruption are widespread problems in interna-

tional business. In 2011, Mabey and Johnson (M&J), a UK

construction firm, made both legal and international business history

as the first British firm to be convicted for paying bribes to secure

contracts in Ghana and Jamaica. Possibly the most important case in

the history of the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the M&J scandal is

the first known case where individual employees were given prison

sentences for being involved in bribery abroad. The main purpose of

this article is to examine the firm's behavior and how it organized its

illegitimate practices at the blind side of the law. Specifically, we draw

on executive hubris as a lens to analyze how the (in-) actions of M&J

executives might have contributed to the firm engaging in bribery

abroad. We argue executive hubris as a meta-theoretical has the

potential to extend our understanding as to whether and how execu-

tives' sense of invisibility and illusion of control may contribute to

their consciously breaking rules overseas to gain advantage over

competitors.

Empirically, we draw on a qualitative study of archival materials,

including court documents, witness statements, company emails, and

newspaper articles on the M&J bribery scandal. This article contrib-

utes to the literature on executive hubris and bribery in international

business in the following ways: first, while the established body of

scholarship has noted bribery is rife in international business (Sanyal,

2012; Sanyal & Samanta, 2004; Baughn, Bodie, Buchanan & Bixby,

2010), this article provides insight into the organizing processes

through which international businesses bribe foreign officials; second,

by drawing on the case of the first UK firm to be prosecuted for pay-

ing bribes abroad, our article opens up new possibilities for re-thinking

why some organizations may be more prone to breaking sanctioned

rules than others when operating abroad.

The rest of the article is organized as follows: first, we provide a

brief review of the existing literature on corruption and bribery in

international business, after which we present hubris as a theoretical

lens to understand bribery in international business. Following this,

we provide an overview of M&J and the bribery cases that led to the

company's conviction, together with the research methodology under-

pinning our empirical inquiry. Next, we present our research findings.

DOI: 10.1002/tie.21989

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2019;61:387–396. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 387