Continuity or Change: A Configurational Examination of Corporate Responses to Wrongdoing

What brings governance changes in the follow-up of organizational misconduct? While the phenomenon of misconduct is well studied in organization studies, it is still unclear how organizational and environmental conditions play a role in preventing future misconduct to occur. Our aim is thus exploring how various configurations of organizational and environmental conditions are contributing to governance changes in the aftermath of misconduct. We conduct a configurational analysis of 74 cases of organizational misconduct and find that the history of misconduct of an organization is particularly relevant for continuity or changes to happen. Furthermore our results highlight that the conditions contributing to change differ greatly from the conditions contributing to continuity in the aftermath of misconduct.