Corporate crime
In the United Kingdom, for example, following wider publicity of fatal accidents on the rail network and at sea, the term is commonly used in reference to corporate manslaughter and to involve a more general discussion about the technological hazards posed by business enterprises (see Wells: 2001).
In the United States, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was passed to reform business practices, including enhanced corporate responsibility, financial disclosures, and combat fraud,[3] following the highly publicized and extremely harmful (to victims) scandals of Enron, WorldCom, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and Bernie Madoff.
Company chief executive officer (CEO) and company chief financial officer (CFO) are required to personally certify financial reports to be accurate and compliant with applicable laws, with criminal penalties for willful misconduct including monetary fines up to $5,000,000 and prison sentence up to 20 years.
The Law Reform Commission of New South Wales offers an explanation of such criminal activities:Corporate crime poses a significant threat to the welfare of the community.
Simpson (2002) avers that this process should be straightforward because a state should simply engage in victimology to identify which behavior causes the most loss and damage to its citizens, and then represent the majority view that justice requires the intervention of the criminal law.
But states depend on the business sector to deliver a functioning economy, so the politics of regulating the individuals and corporations that supply that stability become more complex.
Corporate profitability in these areas therefore depends on building more prison facilities, managing their operations, and selling inmate labor.
This view also takes into account micro and macro social, environmental, and personality factors, using a holistic systems approach to understanding the causation of corporate crime.
[7]: 4 The term derives its meaning from the words organization (a structured unit) and culture (the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices).
Sutherland in 1949, argued to the American Sociological Society the need to expand the boundaries of the study of crime to include the criminal act of respectable individuals in the course of their occupation.
[12][11] Organi-cultural deviance was further explored by Gendron and Husted,[11] using a micro-environmental approach, identifying social dynamics within deviant organizations believed to lure and capture individuals.
In organi-cultural deviance, social dynamics and micro-environmental forces are believed, by Gendron and Husted, to result in the individual's dependence upon the organization for their basic needs.
In the paper Using Gang and Cult Typologies to Understand Corporate Crimes, Gendron and Husted found organizations engaging in organi-cultural deviance used coercive power, monetary, physical and/or psychological threats, to maintain their gravitational hold on the individual.
The concept of organi-cultural deviance includes both micro (personal, psychological or otherwise internal forces exercising influence over an individual's behavior) and macro influences (group dynamics, organizational culture, inter-organizational forces as well as system pressures and constraints, such as a legal system or overall economic environment).
[13] Organi-cultural deviance is based on the premise social pressure and economic forces exert strain on organizations to engage in corporate crime.
Robert Merton championed strain theorists in the field of criminology, believing there to be "a universal set of goals toward which all Americans, regardless of background and position, strive, chief among these is monetary success".
