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3 - Why corporations kill and get away with it: the failure of law to cope with crime in organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2009

André Nollkaemper
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Harmen van der Wilt
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Summary

Introduction

It is a sad truism that there is nothing that people will not do to other people. This may be at the individual level, as with the psychopathic serial murderer, but it is particularly the case with regard to collective behaviour. This can occur in groups, institutions and organizations driven by ideology, patriotism, extreme belief in a leader, kinship or clanship, by racial hatred or by religious fanaticism. People become absorbed in the group and, within its solidarity, restraints are removed and they commit acts they would almost certainly never contemplate doing as individuals. To a degree then, the organization or collective is complicit. Indeed, I argue that there is ample evidence to support the contention that ‘organizations kill’. In essence, I will maintain that there are no ‘individuals’ in organizations and that organizations commit ‘crimes’. This draws attention to the social-psychology of ‘deviant’ behaviour in organizations and I will lilustrate this with regard to policing and the business corporation. And in relation to the latter, I will argue that the law seems unable, or unwilling, to tackle the issue of corporate blame. It remains fixated on the individual and the organization too often manoeuvres successfully to evade the criminal label.

In addressing collective behaviour, Kelman argues that people within institutional settings are pressurised or persuaded into obedience. Those settings are rather like large-scale replications of Milgram's famous, or infamous, laboratory experiments.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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