A scientometric analysis of the structure and trends in corporate fraud research: a 66-year review
| Date | 20 July 2023 |
| Pages | 629-651 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-05-2023-0121 |
| Published date | 20 July 2023 |
| Author | Godfred Matthew Yaw Owusu,Theodora Aba Abekah Koomson,George Nana Agyekum Donkor |
A scientometric analysis of the
structure and trends in corporate
fraud research: a 66-year review
Godfred Matthew Yaw Owusu and Theodora Aba Abekah Koomson
Department of Accounting, University of Ghana Business School, Legon, Ghana, and
George Nana Agyekum Donkor
ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, Lome, Togo
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to review corporate fraud, asa concept, and the emerging research trends in
corporatefraud research from 1957 to 2022 using bibliometric analysis techniques.
Design/methodology/approach –A total of 7,750 publications from the Scopus database were first
assessed using performance analysis to explore the descriptive nature of the bibliographic data, and
subsequently, citation, co-citation, co-occurrence and bibliographic coupling analyses were conductedusing
the VOSviewersoftware.
Findings –The results indicate there has been increasing growth in fraud research over the years,
especially since the global corporate scandalsof 2008. Although fraud is a global issue, the results suggest
that most extant studies originate from developed economies, with a high level of collaboration amongst
scholars in thesecountries. In addition, the co-occurrence analysisindicates that research into corporate fraud
has largely focused on its determinants and corruption. The determinants identified are further clusteredin
the paper as individual,organizational and national-level factors.
Practical implications –The findings should inform practitioners and policymakers of the state of
knowledge on corporate fraud which could be useful in developing strategies and policies to mitigate its
occurrence.
Social implications –The study points to the need for research collaborations among scholars in
developingeconomies to increase investigations intothe occurrences of fraud.
Originality/value –To the best of the authors’knowledge, thisis the first study to holistically assess the
intellectualstructure of corporate fraud studies from itsinception and the trends over time.
Keywords Corruption, Performance analysis, Bibliometric, Citation, Science mapping,
Corporate fraud
Paper type General review
Introduction
Fraud broadly refers to the deliberate misuse and misapplication of a firm’s resources for
personal enrichment [ACFE (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners), 2020]. The
Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (2009) specifically defines corporate fraud
as an intentional misrepresentation of a company’sfinancial information and corporate
activities by management, employees, owners or third parties, on or against a company, to
mislead the public and gain advantages over others. Firms lose about 5% of revenue to
fraud annually as a result of the actions and inactionsof individuals within the organization
[ACFE (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners), 2020]. For instance, Girau et al. (2022)
find that fraud occurs because managers act contrary to the ethical codes of their
organization and directors fail to execute their obligations to supervise and ensure
A
scientometric
analysis
629
Journalof Financial Crime
Vol.31 No. 3, 2024
pp. 629-651
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1359-0790
DOI 10.1108/JFC-05-2023-0121
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1359-0790.htm
compliance. Employees are reported to engage in asset misappropriation at their
organizations, which ridstheir firms of resources that could otherwise increase productivity
(Koomson et al.,2020). Owners of firms sometimes engage in corporate fraud, especially
financial statement fraud, to safeguard their assets used as a guarantee of the debts of the
company (Pedneault,2010).
Fraud continues to be a topical issue in manyorganizations across the globe, irrespective
of their type and size. Over the past two decades, many corporate fraud cases have been
uncovered in businesses worldwide. These high-profile corporate frauds, especially in the
USA, led to the bankruptcy and eventual collapse of many giant firms, including Enron,
WorldCom, Tyco, Arthur Andersonand Steinhoff (Ozili, 2020). The shutdown of these firms
caused enormous losses for many stakeholders. Christian et al. (2019) report that investors
suffered a lock-up of theirfunds and the public’s confidence in the financial systems of firms
has been eroded. In addition, Girau et al. (2022) find that many people lost their jobs, and
society at large experienced some level of financial distress and instability. Similarly,
PricewaterhouseCoopers (2018) reports that corporate fraud leads to negativesocial effects
such as reduced employee morale, bad business connections and harm to an organization’s
image.
Regulatory bodies have enacted legislative frameworks to protect shareholders,
especially investors in publicly traded firms, in an attempt to minimize the effects of fraud
(Dyck et al.,2010;Uzun et al., 2004). For example, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act was enacted in
response to the two most notable cases of fraud in publicly traded companies, WorldCom
and Enron. Again, firms listed on various stock exchanges are now required to have
corporate governance provisions to guard against fraud (Uzun et al., 2004). It is not
surprising, therefore, that, researchers’interest in the subject has grownin tandem with the
rise in corporate fraud given its dire consequences for various stakeholders (Huber, 2012;
Koomson et al., 2020;Owusu et al.,2021). Particularly, researchers have sought to
investigate the likely causes of corporate fraud to help predict measures to minimize its
occurrence.
Several reasons have been given for the occur rence of fraud in the workplace by
scholars. While the findings of individual researchers provide s ome insights into the
causes of corporate fraud, an aggregation of these findings in review studies will
provide a more comprehensive source of information on the trends in corporate fraud
for practitioners and policymakers to map out strategies to minimize fraud. However,
there are very few review studies in the current literature on fraud. In addition, most of
these review studies have focused largely on fraud detection (Abdallah et al., 2016;
Ahmi et al., 2021;Akoglu et al., 2015;Anand et al., 2017;Bhattacharyya et al., 2011;
Chandola et al., 2009;Dorminey et al., 2012;Hogan et al., 2008;Faizah et al., 2020;
Ranshous et al., 2015;Savage et al., 2014). Moreover, these reviews appear subjective as
the studies adopted qualitative approaches that mainly summarized existing research
findings and not objective and quantitative techniques such as bibliometric analysis.
Evidence of the few quantitative-based reviews o n the subject was confirmed from a
Scopus search of “fraud”AND “bibliometric”, which yielded only three papers with a
narrow scope on corporate fraud research.
The first is a study on scientific production’s evolution of accounting fraud in
organizations using bibliometric analysis by Bermeo-Giraldo et al. (2021), which highlights
mainly the risk of fraud and trends in administration,auditing and corporate governance as
a result of fraud. The paper shows the productivity of authors, countries and publication
sources and illustrates the trends in fraud research using co-occurrence, co-citation and co-
authorship. The authors,however, used only 246 documents out of the manypublications on
JFC
31,3
630
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