Beata Stępień / Bryan Early / Julia Grauvogel / Keith Preble / Szymon Truskolaski

The Impact of External Pressure on Companies’ Responses to Sanctions – an International Comparative Study

European Journal On Criminal Policy and Research | 2024


  • Abstract

    What explains the strategies firms adopt in response to economic sanctions? Our study argues that different types of external pressure, such as public shaming, the nature of companies’ business relationships, and national-level legal-regulatory environments affects how firms respond to the sanctions imposed against Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. We develop a suite of hypotheses about how external pressure affects firms’ compliance behaviors and whether firms adopt reactive and/or proactive strategic responses. We test our hypotheses by analyzing results from a survey of 610 medium-sized companies operating in Germany, Poland, and the United States. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we find that external pressure is associated with higher levels of compliance and overcompliance with sanctions but is also associated with undercompliant behavior. We also find that compliance with sanctions is associated with a high degree of proactive response, which suggests compliant firms may often seek out legal means of circumventing sanctions. We further observed variation in the effects of external pressure, compliance behavior, and strategic responses on US firms compared to those in European Union members Germany and Poland.

    Research Programmes

    Journal

    European Journal On Criminal Policy and Research

    Volume

    Online First

    Prof. Dr. Beata Stępień

    Prof. Dr. Beata Stępień

    Poznań University of Economics and Business


    Ass. Prof. Dr. Bryan Early

    Ass. Prof. Dr. Bryan Early

    Georgia State University





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