Chapter 4 illustrates some typical steps in the process of identifying organizational scapegoats and discusses the complex relationship between individual and organizational contribution in the etiology of critical events and organizational failures. In part, this involves the analysis of two emblematic cases: the torture of detainees that took place at Abu Ghraib prison and the scandal known as “Dieselgate.” These two cases show that scapegoating is an organizational strategy that can be implemented by both private, for-profit organizations as well as non-profit, governmental ones. These strategies can be used to cope with different crises ranging from (involuntary) incidents to (deliberate) violations of laws and moral norms.

Chapter 3 presents the Corporations and Human Rights Database by exploring patterns and trends with descriptive data to illustrate the variation in access to remedy. The CHRD includes over 1,300 allegations of corporate human rights abuse between 2000 and 2014. Chapter 3 explains how my students and I created the CHRD, which is the first systematic database on corporate human rights abuses and access to remedy. This chapter discusses the data collection process and includes descriptive statistics on the type of claim, corporate responses, and associated judicial and non-judicial remedy efforts included in the database. This chapter familiarizes the reader with the data, discusses verification processes, and provides a basic landscape of how the CHRD informs business and human rights in Latin America.

Chapter 5 compares two different investigative logics that follow on from organizational failures: the accusatory approach, based on the person, and the system approach, aimed at organizational learning. It concludes by illustrating possible undesired effects of the accusatory approach through the discussion of the widespread practice of defensive medicine.

A large cruise ship sinks after hitting some outcropping rocks near the shore. Who is to blame? In the face of negative events – accidents, corporate scandals, crises and bankruptcies – there are two organizational strategies for managing blame. The first is to take full responsibility for the event and to implement adequate corrective measures. The second is to create one or more scapegoats by transferring blame to some of the people directly involved in the event. In this way, the organization can appear blameless and avoid costly remedial interventions. Reappraising the Costa Concordia shipwreck and other well-known cases, Catino analyzes the processes and mechanisms behind creating the “organizational scapegoat.” In doing so, Catino highlights the limits of explanations centered on guilt and individual solutions to organizational problems, and underlines the need for a different civic epistemology.

In this chapter, we portray the evolution of the ownership and control structure of Italian firms over a period – from early 1990s to date – in which institutional changes, external shocks and reforms affected the economy, the financial system and the legal protection of shareholders. Specifically, we provide a detailed account of the organization forms of Italian companies, the control models of listed and unlisted firms, the identity of the largest shareholder, the role of institutional investors and the control-enhancing mechanisms of family listed firms, which still represent the largest share in the private companies’ segment of the stock exchange.

We find that many features of the ownership structure and the control models are still in place. Italian economy remains characterized by a predominance of SME that rely on banks for external finance, family firms reluctant to go public and release control, high ownership concentration, even among listed firms.

And yet institutional reforms did change the corporate governance system, the transparency and the attitude towards minority investors as pressures from the regulatory authorities led pyramidal groups to shorten the control chains and to dismantle cross-shareholdings, all of which eventually sparked a deep interest by foreign institutional investors in recent years.

Finally, the conclusion provides an overview of the argument and findings, which together call for a departure from the more traditional narrative around the governance gap. Instead, this research illustrates that while impunity does exist, there are many more efforts to hold corporations accountable than the governance gap narrative would suggest. The varieties of remedy approach focus on the real shortcomings associated with governing – the abilities to engage with an adversary, absorb contestation, and explore creative and possibly unorthodox solutions to find a better path forward. This chapter also addresses the generalizability of this work and shares some areas of future research.

Engaging directly with agonistic thought, Chapter 6 asks whether contestation about corporate human rights abuses, over the long-term, shapes democratic institutions more broadly. What is clear in agonistic scholarship is that confrontation must be incorporated or integrated into democratic institutions. This chapter empirically tests this relationship. It finds that contestation improves measures of respect for human rights and civic empowerment. That is, without any formal or informal response, simply speaking out and making abuses known improves respect for human rights, generally. The data also illustrate that, regardless of the outcome, there is a positive cumulative effect of trials over time, demonstrating the importance of reflexive innovation. In contrast, simply engaging in non-judicial remedy alone does not improve respect for human rights. The analysis shows that there is a positive, cumulative relationship between respect for human rights and those non-judicial remedy efforts led by the state. If corporations lead the non-judicial remedy effort, however, they do nothing to improve respect for human rights or more robust civic engagement over the long-term.

Chapter 2 takes a deeper dive into the literatures on pragmatism and agonism to illustrate how, when combined, they provide the intellectual framing and underpinnings of the varieties of remedy approach. While pragmatism highlights the need to analyze the dynamics between local actors, their advocates, and the firms involved in the abuse, agonism opens us to the notion that non-violent contestation and confrontation could have a potentially positive role. With this foundation, I develop the varieties of remedy approach, exploring how contestation (e.g. claim making) shapes governance outcomes (e.g. access to judicial or non-judicial remedy mechanisms). Three pathways are discussed in greater depth in Chapter 2 – Institutional Strength, Corporate Characteristics, and Elevating Voices – and tested empirically in subsequent chapters.