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.100 Corporate and White-collar CrimeThis SAGE ebook is copyright and is supplied by NetLibrary.Unauthorised distribution forbidden. 04-Minkes-3706:05-Minkes-Ch-04 5/29/2008 10:52 AM Page 101Suggestions for further readingAllinson, R.E.(2002) Space, Time and the Ethical Foundations.Aldershot: Ashgate.Allinson, R.E.(2004a) An object lesson in balancing business and nature inHong Kong: saving the birds of long valley , in Lene Bomann-Larsen andOddny Wiggen (eds), Responsibility in World Business: Managing HarmfulSide-effects of Corporate Activity.Tokyo: United Nations University Press.Allinson, R.E.(2004b) The birth of spiritual economics , in László Zsolnai (ed.),Spirituality and Ethics in Management.Dordrecht: Kluwer AcademicPublishers, pp.61 74.Allinson, R.E.(2004c) Circles within a circle: the condition for the possibility ofethical business institutions within a market system , Journal of BusinessEthics, 53: 17 28.Allinson, R.E.(2005) Saving Human Lives: Lessons in Management Ethics.The Netherlands: Dordrecht.101The Foundations of Business EthicsThis SAGE ebook is copyright and is supplied by NetLibrary.Unauthorised distribution forbidden. 05-Minkes-3706:06-Minkes-Ch-05 5/29/2008 12:55 PM Page 102FIVEThe Organization Did ItIndividuals, Corporations and CrimeMaurice PunchIntroductionMannheim once said that Sutherland deserved the Nobel Prize forCriminology (had there been one) and Nelken remarked that he may haveearned it, but it would not have been for the clarity of his concepts.For theconcept of white-collar crime in his pioneering work was catching but mis-leading (Braithwaite, 1985).Nevertheless, reading his seminal work and itcan still be read for its insights which are often as applicable today as when hepenned them it is clear he meant corporate crime (Sutherland, 1949).Whereas white-collar conveys an individual albeit the organization mandoing it ostensibly for the company the material tends to illustrate that thereal crook is the organization: Corporations have committed crimes & they aredeliberate and have a consistent quality & the criminality of the corporations,like that of professional thieves, is persistent (Sutherland, 1983: 217; empha-sis added).And here I wish to argue that in much corporate crime it is the organizationthat done it and that, rather than focusing on the deviant executive, weshould look at the organizational component in crime.Sutherland remains theessential starting-point but his focus is very much on clean hands crime, com-mitted rationally and in a calculating way on behalf of the company: also notmuch blood flows in his work.In contrast, I would argue that the field has developed in two main ways inrecent years.One is related to the evidence of deaths and injuries in the work-place and to members of the public (Slapper and Tombs, 1999; Tombs, thisvolume).This emphasis on corporate violence reveals that corporations can kill and managers can murder (Mokhiber; 1988; Punch, 2000).Executivescan have blood on their hands: and the pursuit of business can lead to theThis SAGE ebook is copyright and is supplied by NetLibrary.Unauthorised distribution forbidden. 05-Minkes-3706:06-Minkes-Ch-05 5/29/2008 12:55 PM Page 103deaths of their victims.The other is concerned with owners and managers whorip off their own companies, looting them of their assets and victimizing theorganization, its employees and those who hoped to benefit from its profits (asin the Savings and Loan scandal: Calavita and Pontell, 1990).Here, then, the starting point is the organizational component in corporatecrime.Ermann and Lundman stateorganizational deviance is consistent with normal organizational routines.The deviantbehaviors are not produced by dramatic or aberrant actions of a few isolated individuals,but instead are an integral part of the organization.Deviance thus exists alongside legiti-mate organizational activities and frequently serves to advance important organizationalgoals.(1982: 91)It draws on views of organizations as criminogenic, as not always rational and aseven pathological.Two points are important here:1 There is a tendency to view organizational life in general and business activity in par-ticular as essentially rational and under control.But that is not always the case.2 It is not organizations that set policies and take decisions but people.In a way that iscorrect: organizations do not exist outside of the collective efforts of individuals.Yet, thisis based on a highly individualized view of social reality in institutions.As Gross puts it, Organizations, though inventions of biological persons and thus totally dependent uponthe continuous activity of such actors, nevertheless may take on lives of their own (1980:59; emphasis added).When people become members of a collective, an institution or organizationthis may in powerful ways demand conformity to group norms, to suppressingindividuality and even to adopting a new identity (as in religious sects).Furthermore, that collective behaviour may lead to distortions in decision-making through processes such as group think and cognitive dissonance.In effect, I wish to argue that corporate crime is made possible because thecorporate setting provides MOM Motive, Opportunity and Means (the trin-ity of all criminal investigations).Within the corporate environment, execu-tives are provided with a range of motives (competition, rivalry, power, status,market share, profits, quarterly returns, speed to market, innovation, etc.);encounter enhanced opportunities for deviance as they reach the boardroomlevel; and the organization legally, financially, socially, politically and institu-tionally forms the means through which the crime is committed
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