From Priority to Payment: A Systematic Integrative Review of Employee Monetary Claims and Access to Recovery in Corporate Liquidation

Purpose This review examines how legal entitlements to employee monetary claims translate into recovery during corporate liquidation and identifies what the available scholarship leaves unresolved.Design/methodology/approach A systematic integrative review combined the original Scopus search, which yielded 15 eligible publications, with a later supplementary Google Scholar search limited to 50 relevance-ranked hits. Full-text assessment admitted 18 additions, producing 33 publications. Evidence was appraised and synthesised qualitatively. The search streams and unavailable reports are reported separately; no meta-analysis was conducted.Findings.Priority alone does not guarantee timely payment. Recovery also depends on notification, proof and verification, institutional administration, estate sufficiency and external protection. Earlier scholarship already connects these mechanisms. Comparable claimant-level evidence on verification, delay and payment remains limited, while doctrinal arguments, modelling and historical scheme totals require different interpretations. Originality/value.The review critically synthesises recovery mechanisms and distinguishes estate distribution from external payment. It separates pension evidence from ordinary wages and identifies the claimant data needed to evaluate administration. Malaysian implications remain conditional on legal, institutional and fiscal assessment.