Understanding the risk of corruption generated by professional clients' strategic ambiguity: Interventional research in the banking sector

Corruption is the subject of much media attention in France and internationally. However, few academic studies have explored the subject. Putting aside hypocritical practices, we focus on strategic ambiguity, specifically in the case of business clients of a bank located in France. Similarly, we focus on the reaction of employees to such strategic ambiguity, which has been studied only on rare occasions until now, and which may lead to situations of corruption. Based on the results of a recent longitudinal study on the Italian mafia, the purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to examine from a theoretical perspective the strategic ambiguity of a selected organization, and then (2) to consider the reactions of the employees of the bank to these strategies during business interactions with companies. In doing so, we detail and illustrate the different forms that strategic ambiguity can take, namely opacity that prevents easy understanding, equivocality that plays on the diversity of rationalizing discourses, and absurdity that favors paradoxical reasoning. In the course of our thinking, we also address the issue of organizational silence, while underlining its implications and limits for those concerned.
We base our work on interventional research conducted in 2020 on 423 mainly executives and managers working in the banking sector. The study gave rise to nearly one hundred hours of interviews and 31 group interviews.