The survey was done from June 1998 through
August 1998 as part of the EBRD (European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and
World Bank Business Environment and Enterprise
Performance Survey. Since our research focused
on the link between organizational isomorphism
and corruption, the period of time is not crucial.
Our objective is to test theoretical hypotheses
concerning corruption in various national contexts
and not to describe corruption in emerging
countries at the end of the 1990s. Table I gives
the list of countries and the number of interviews
by country. The diversity of the 18 countries allows
us to test our hypotheses in various national
contexts. All firms participating in the survey are
financial institutions divided equally between banks
and insurance companies, plus one investment
fund (See Table II for details about the sample).
As usual for such an industry, the majority (nearly
40%) of financial institutions were located in the
capital city of their respective country. The other
financial institutions were in large cities with 20%
in towns of more than 250,000 inhabitant and
24.3% in cities of between 50,000 and 249,999
inhabitants. The size of the firms varied from large
enterprises of more than 200 employees (23% of
the sample), average companies between 50 and
199 employees (27%) and smaller firms below 50