Methodology
To answer our research question, the methodology was a direct collection of data through face-to-face interviews. Interviews were conducted with company managers or owners in site visits in 18 countries. Most respondents were in the top management of their firms with 36% chief executives, presidents or general managers and 24% holding other executive
positions (most commonly directors of various divisions). The remaining 40% had managerial positions such as finance managers. 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