The Organizational Aspects of Corporate and Organizational Crime

Corporate crimes seem endemic to modern society. The newspapers are filledon a daily basis with examples of financial manipulation, accounting fraud, foodfraud, cartels, bribery, toxic spills and environmental harms, corporate humanrights violations, insider trading, privacy violations, discrimination, corporatemanslaughter or violence, and, recently, software manipulation. Clearly, theproblem of corporate crime transcends the micro level of the individual ‘rottenapple’: although corporate crimes are ultimately committed by individualmembers of an organization, they have more structural roots, as the enablingand justifying organizational context in which they take place plays a definingrole. Organizations provide individuals with positions, incentives, networks, rules,routines, perceptions and beliefs, that structure the opportunities for crime. Thus,organizational factors can explain how misconduct in organizations is defined,perceived, normalized, organized, and facilitated on the one hand, and controlledand prevented on the other hand.Organization studies have a long tradition of studying misconduct and deviance inorganizational contexts. This Special Issue of Administrative Sciences focuses onthe organizational and administrative aspects of a broad spectrum of corporateand organizational crimes.