Overcoming the Impact of Corruption through Diligence: The Experience of Russian Female Managers

This article proposes that managerial time spent dealing with regulations, in addition to being a reflection of regulatory burden, can also be partially accounted by managerial strategy and propensity to “play by the rules” rather than rely on informal corrupt means to solve business problems in Russia. Using top-manager gender as a proxy for such behaviors, the study finds that firms headed by female managers are more likely to devote more time to dealing with regulations, and to protect their interests in courts. Such firms are less likely to be in a situation where corrupt requests are made, and also minimize corruption impact such as relative size of payments, when actually exposed to corruption pressures. It appears that there are non-spurious gender effect persisting after controlling for multiple firm- and region- level variables. With regards to managerial time spent on dealing with regulations in particular, it appears that the gender effects are reflected in differential responses to corrupt pressures (e.g. spending more time dealing with regulations), but increase in time tax by itself does not appear to limit impact of corruption, except waiting times for operating license, which are shortened. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.