ABSTRACT
Corruption in organizations is commonplace across the globe in many industries, including sport. Despite the immense ramifications stemming from corrupt and unethical behavior and interest by sport organizations to comprehend the effects of corruption and employ tools to discourage unethical actions, literature in this area has been limited. In order to curb corrupt and unethical activities, governing bodies often implement penalties or sanctions to deter similar actions in the future. Through a review of rule-breaking, corruption, and sanction literature, and utilizing ethical climate theory (ECT), we examine what features of organizations encourage corrupt types of behaviors, and what tenets of sanctions allow for the greatest effectiveness. The present research used the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as a conceptual setting. We present a series of propositions for consideration to improve the viability of the sanctioning process in the NCAA applicable to other third-party regulators.
