Abstract: Companies and the regulators that oversee them assume compliance violations follow a normal distribution based on individual wrongdoing. This assumption causes the focus of compliance programs to be breadth and consistent application of compliance tools. The most significant compliance risks, however, do not conform to this assumption; they are a function of network-driven power law distributions consistent with other aspects of criminal behavior. To more completely understand and measure compliance lapses, and therefore prevent them, companies should focus on ethical influencers within their organizations who create outsized, interconnected risk.

Abstract: One of the core challenges in compliance measurement is to assess and analyze undetected instances of illegal behavior. This chapter discusses interview strategies to best capture such deviant conduct and the factors of influence on it. It discusses two core approaches. First is the informant approach, where multiple rounds of interviews with key informants with deep knowledge of the regulated organization are combined and triangulated to construct a case study of what happened in the organization and what influenced it. Second is the respondent approach, where the same interview is held once with a larger group of similar actors in regulated organizations to understand and compare how these individual actors see compliance and the forces that shape it. The chapter discusses for what purposes each of these approaches is best suited, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how they can best be conducted. It shows the importance of a pilot study, proper interview design, and thorough preparation in interview techniques used during the actual interview.

Abstract: Since the subprime mortgage crisis there has been a heightened awareness of corporate crime and its potentially devastating consequences. Further, more recent misdeeds by major corporations, like Monsanto, Boeing, and Purdue Pharma, who are accused of misleading the public and regulators regarding the danger of their products, have intensified interest in evidence-based policies to prevent organizational offending. While systematic reviews are still relatively rare in the field of corporate crime, they are used more commonly in other fields that examine organizational compliance, like Business and Psychology. This chapter focuses on the use of systematic review/meta-analysis for measuring compliance. I provide a comprehensive overview of the methodology, discuss the current use of systematic reviews for examining and measuring compliance, and review the advantages and disadvantages of systematic reviews – both in general and specifically related to compliance. Findings from the reviewed meta-analyses indicated that measurement issues were not a uniform problem across compliance research but impacted the results in certain areas such that studies that used self-report data produced different findings when compared with studies based on official data. Additionally, definitional issues were commonplace and problematic; definitional issues frequently affected the outcome. The use of various constructs for independent and dependent variables resulted in differing findings in most areas of compliance examined here. When possible, researchers are encouraged to verify measures using multiple strategies. Additionally, careful meta-analyses should continue to be used to quantify measurement and definitional issues and guide future research.

Abstract: The use of self-report surveys in social science research is ubiquitous, yet the promise of such methods for the evaluation of business compliance has yet to be fully explored. This chapter details the unique benefits of adopting a survey approach generally in the study of compliance, as well as examining the benefits of “factorial survey experiments” more specifically. Specifically, surveys and factorial surveys have the potential to uncover noncompliance before it happens, provide insights into why noncompliance occurs, and can examine whether employee trainings or other internal efforts are effective in promoting compliance behavior. Throughout the chapter, the utility of these methods for both academic scholars as well as compliance practitioners is emphasized in an attempt to encourage people within corporations to consider moving beyond a reliance on data collected by the corporation in the course of everyday business processes – ideally in partnerships with scholars.

The chapter begins with a brief history of survey research and how surveys have been used in compliance research, then provides an overview of the known benefits and weaknesses of the survey method. A description follows detailing more specifically how the integration of experimental manipulations enhances the usefulness of surveys in the form of “factorial survey” methods. This description includes information on what those survey formats entail (using an example from the author’s own research to illustrate) and outlines their benefits as well as their limitations when applied to compliance research. Finally, the chapter concludes by articulating how the use of surveys and survey experiments would benefit both scholars and professionals.

Abstract: This chapter reviews the utility of experimental methodology for compliance scholarship, describing various types of experiments and their benefits. Specifically, experiments are best suited for establishing the causal impact of a program or policy designed to impact compliance behavior – in other words, did that policy truly cause a change in behavior? With random assignment to “treatment” and “control” groups, researchers can be much more confident in their conclusions about program or policy effectiveness. However, there are limitations to experimental designs that must be considered as well.