The effects of the anti-mafia entrepreneurial behavior on firm performance: an empirical study on Southern Italian small-medium enterprises

Abstract

The organized crime is a relevant ethical, cultural, legal, sociologic and economic issue in many countries. In the last years there have been some positive signs of a reaction against the mafia like the successful experience of Addiopizzo, an anti-bribery association founded in Palermo in 2004 that today counts over 500 affiliated firms. Gambetta (1993) suggests the mafia could better be understood as a profit maximizing corporation in the marketplace for private protection. Despite this position has been criticized (Scalia, 2010), it highlights the crucial role of the pizzo for the mafia activities. In this study, we identify as “Anti-mafia Entrepreneurial Behaviour” (AEB) the choice of the firm of not paying the pizzo and making this commitment public and visible. This paper analyses the consequences of this entrepreneurial choice using a quantitative method. The underlying research question is: what is the impact of the AEB on firm performance? To the best of our knowledge this paper is the first about these consequences. One of the main reasons to explain this gap in literature is probably the strong difficulty to measure a hidden phenomenon like the payment of pizzo by the firms (Gambetta, 1993). The paper mainly contributes to the corporate performance literature (Hansen and Wernelfelt, 1989; Dyer, 2006) by analysing an internal determinant (the AEB) not yet investigated.