I had the chance to review the manuscript titled “Diving Deep into the Dark Side: A Review and Examination of Research on Organizational Misconduct in Emerging Markets” and thank you for this opportunity. The authors are investigating a very timely and highly relevant topic. While I am convinced by the topic itself, the manuscript could profit from some revisions in order to increase its quality.
Introduction: I think that the introduction needs some rewriting. For instance, does OM occur more often in emerging markets conducted by MNEs from developed countries, or is it the local companies, which are engaging in OM? If it is the former, could this be related to the discrepancy between the MNEs home and host countries, rather than just the conditions in the EMs themselves? The questions I am raising do not necessarily have to be answered with “yes”, I just want to nudge you to write the intro with a more neutral perspective, since right now it appears that the EM and (maybe) the companies there are the bad guys.
Conceptual background: From my perspective, the authors are not studying OM in EM. It is rather a study of OM in anything but developed markets (see countries listed in Table 3, e.g. Bangladesh and Tanzania are rather developing than emerging markets). While this should not hinder authors from using the wording of EM, this should be accounted for in the definition provided at the end of p.3. Your keyword protocol supports this.
Studying a concept like OM in isolation always brings along discrepancies when taking the arguments and reflecting them against the larger context. As such, the authors write about institutional voids and complexity that may lead to OM. At the same time, the exact same characteristics are in some studies considered to be antecedents of exceptional CSR engagement of firms. This suggests that it looking at just the institutional conditions of an EM is not sufficient. The authors should reflect this, which may also help them to introduce the subchapter 2.3. Having said that it might be beneficial for the line of argumentation to switch the positions of 2.1 and 2.2, i.e. starting the conceptual background with the concept of OM.
While I appreciate your work of creating Table 1 with definitions over a period of 30 years, I would suggest the authors to build a figure (maybe a timeline) that captures the evolvement of the understanding of OM. Thereby, instead of “just” providing the respective definitions, the authors could carve out the developments, contributing to the literature on OM in the wider sense.
Methodology: The method chapter is relatively short. I would like to ask authors to extend their explanations on their research process and coding in order to increase transparency.
Findings: I applaud the authors for the comprehensive Figure 1, which I consider as a great contribution. Having said this, I would like to encourage the authors to more critically discuss their findings, i.e. how the studies examined OM have addressed the topic. In this regard, I must say that I am slightly disappointed with the 45 studies and that none of them adapted their research framework to the EM context. I suggest the authors already to include such observations at the end of each subchapter of the findings. You are doing so for instance when you state that the definitions applied are developed in a Western market context at the end of p.11. I would like to see such transfer and comparison between the 45 studies and the developed market context in the other subchapter as well. Another avenue to increase the value of the findings chapter could be to transcend the 45 studies’ findings and point out similarities and overlaps. This of course depends on the 45 studies’ nature.
Discussion and contributions: I am convinced that your study can have some meaningful contributions, but in the current form, they are not explicitly carved out yet. That is why from my perspective, this last chapter needs the most rewriting. In subchapter 5.1, authors are referring to the contextual issues, which is of utmost importance. However, I am questioning if a local definition of OM is really needed. Based on the definition of Greve as well as your suggested definition on p.27 OM seems to be highly subjective. At the same time, assuming that the companies conducting OM are MNCs their misbehavior has not necessarily to be considered OM in the host country (EM) in which they are operating, but in their home country (developed market). This in line with the law setting that the local population of emerging markets can also sue MNCs in the MNC’s home country rather makes a universal understanding of OM necessary. What I agree on with the authors are the other two points in 5.1 that the relationships may be structures differently in EM and that EMs should not be considered as homogeneous. I would like to see these two points to be extended.
In chapter 5.2, authors are discussing theoretical issues, which is well done. I was wondering whether this could be specified and extended and if you find other examples (similar to that of Torres de Olivera and Rottig (2018) to illustrate your point, or alternatively develop this further on your own. I would also like to highlight that authors should be careful with different avenues for future research that they are suggesting, since the last part in 5.2 calling for comparative studies opposes previous suggestions pointed out, because either you are there calling for a universal (comparable) definition etc., or the authors themselves are assuming some level of homogeneity across EMs.
Chapter 5.3: From what I know, it is not necessarily true that gift giving is always considered a bribe in developed market contexts, it is just more regulated, for instance by limiting the value of gifts to about 50$. Therefore, I consider the example to be slightly misleading. Moreover, I would recommend authors to be careful when referring to the concepts of guanxi, blat, and jeitinho, since these comprise so much more than just relationships or gift giving. I do not want to offend the authors, but this seems to be a very Western perspective on these concepts. When not addressing these in more detail, I would recommend not mentioning these.
Chapter 5.4 is underdeveloped and in the current form, does not provide any additional value.
In chapter 5.5, the authors highlight a large array of possible avenues for future research. While I appreciate their engagement in this regard, I would recommend prioritizing these suggestions and then talking about the most promising ones in more detail. Right now, it seems that just everything has to be researched. I would recommend the authors to clearly distinguish between general avenues and avenues in the context of EM, and then focus on the latter. For instance, the role of gender diversity in the management board is nothing specific to EM and at the same time, I would not limit this to gender diversity but speak about diversity in general (education, background, field, nationality, etc.). One very important avenue I see, the authors very briefly mention on p.34, is the simultaneous investigation of institutional and organizational level factors. This relates to my comment in the very beginning, whether just institutional conditions lead to OM, or MNCs’ problems handling these unfamiliar conditions.
Lastly, one general comment about the authors’ argumentation on institutional voids in EM. From the perspective of indigenous management research, talking about institutional voids in EM is a very Western perspective. An alternative perspective is that there are institutions that structure and arrange the relationships between firms and stakeholders, but that these are less formalized and therefore from a developed market perspective less “safe”. Therefore, in order to practice what you preach, I recommend authors to be more sensitive in this regard and refer to institution not only as formal laws, but to consider the three pillar model of Scott (cultural, regulatory, normative).
I hope my comments help you to further develop your paper and I wish you good luck with it.

I thank the authors for thoroughly addressing my and the other reviewer’s comments. From my perspective, the manuscript has gained substantially. Reading the revised version, I came across some (minor) issues that I would still like to see addressed.

Introduction: I would delete the very first sentence of the introduction (“Academic research and business practice have shown that stakeholders expect companies to be ethical, fair, and trustworthy (Ferrell, 2004)”). Firstly, this one sentence is insufficient to create a contradiction between stakeholders’ expectations and reality. Secondly, the source, though relevant, is relatively old and in the meantime it has been shown in several other studies that it is a highly generalized statement and that it is necessary to distinguish between stakeholders and their different interests.

In the second paragraph, you refer to a study be EY. Who are the respondents in the survey? Is this a descriptive statistic or a significant finding? I think this should be communicated more transparently, or maybe strengthened with academic results.
I believe that the call for more context-specific conceptualizations is one of your strongest arguments for this study. Could you further strengthen this argument, for example by pointing out misunderstandings or wrong implications if this is not done?

Conceptual background: I applaud the authors for their new figure 1. I think this is a great contribution to your study. I was wondering, why for the 1990s it says “ethical” for nature of misconduct? Should this be “unethical” or was it really considered an ethical action back then? Considering your explanation in the text, it seems to be a typo.

I would recommend to move the paragraph on institutional voids and CSR (currently at the end of 2.2) to the limitations section and use if to call for more holistic research examining the bright and the dark side (CSR and OM) within one study. When do institutional voids and institutional complexity promote CSR or OM, what are further relevant factors influencing this?

I was wondering whether it would increase the readability if you merge sections 2.1 and 2.3. Both address the concept of OM, first its development, then its theoretical background. I am not saying that this is a must-do; it is really an open suggestion. Alternatively, you could switch positions of 2.2 and 2.3, since that way you would first focus on general knowledge on CM, and then continue with the case of EM.

Figure 2 is inserted twice in the current version. I would only refer to it in the findings section, since I consider this as your main contribution.

Findings: I believe that your findings section gained substantially and you discuss the findings in more detail.

Discussion and Contributions: I think that you wrote a comprehensive discussion section and managed well to transcend the individual findings you made. When addressing avenues for future research, I see some misbalance between the different suggestions and sometimes felt a bit lost in the pure amount of avenues. I was wondering whether it would make sense to leave out some suggestions. For instance, I believe that “role of technology” is one of the recommendations, which is discussed in less detail and therefore not as strong as the others are. Also, and I am repeating what I mentioned in the first revision, I believe that diversity should be discussed more general. I recommend at least to including this notion that there is more to diversity than gender, while you can still then focus on the gender aspect in the ongoing description of your suggestion for future research.

Overall, I have the feeling that you are on a good way in developing this study further. I wish you good luck and I hope you consider my comments as helpful and inspiring.