Empreendedorismo corrupto: proposição e aplicação de um esquema teórico para analisar o fenômeno

Abstract

Corruption is a social fact capable of generating extremely harmful consequences for society, directly affecting the democratic system, where agents seek private gains to the detriment of the public interest. Operation Lava Jato, carried out by the Federal Police together with the Federal Public Ministry, investigated a series of crimes related to corruption in the state company, involving the participation of public agents, politicians, businessmen and money changers. Therefore, this thesis aims to theoretically understand how corruption occurs through the lens of entrepreneurial action and empirically to understand Operação Lava Jato. The thesis is divided into two major parts. The first part consists of the introduction, theoretical framework, and methodological aspects. The introduction presents the contextualization of the theme, the thesis, the research problem, the general and specific objective, the theoretical, practical and social justifications, and the organization of the thesis. The theoretical framework, on the other hand, talks about the nature of corruption, the nature of entrepreneurship and corrupt entrepreneurship. The methodological aspects are formed by the ontological and epistemological nature of the research, by the qualitative approach, by the classification as exploratory and descriptive research and by the methodological systematization. The second part was divided into three articles. The first article consists of an integrative review with the objective of exploring the theoretical discussions that relate corruption and entrepreneurship, highlighting the criticisms, limitations and research gaps. This article allowed the verification of research opportunities on the subject, enabling the determination of the path to be followed in the elaboration of the other articles that will compose the thesis. The second article is a bibliographic research on corrupt entrepreneurship as a subtype of criminal entrepreneurship. A content analysis was carried out, based on the following categories: terminologies related to criminal entrepreneurship; literature limitations; criminal versus legal entrepreneurship: characteristics of the phenomena; theories used to analyze criminal entrepreneurship. Subsequently, corrupt entrepreneurship and its current stage in the literature were identified. The third article aims to propose a scheme to understand corruption from entrepreneurial action, as a methodological guide to analyze the phenomenon of corruption. To apply the scheme, a case study of Operation Lava Jato was carried out. It was found that the intersection between the tensions in the institutional logic and the individual's life orientation makes the corrupt agent use the means at his disposal to develop the opportunity for corrupt action to occur and an innovative practice to obtain undue advantages.