Asbestos and Health: A Case of Informal Social Control

Abstract

Publicity and Business RegulationThe purpose of this paper is to show that just as informal social control can bemore important than formal social control with petty juvenile misconduct, this canalso be so for the most massive forms of corporate misconduct. Informal socialcontrol may broadly be defined as behavioural restraint by means other than thoseformally directed by a court or administrative agency. Because of the traditionalcriminological preoccupation with formal sanctioning we often neglect informalcontrol mechanisms such as adverse publicity and stigma. Stigma is, of course, amixed blessing when harnessed to control individual deviance- it caneithershametransgressors into compliance with norms or, through the mechanisms of labelling,strengthen deviant patterns by fostering deviant self-conceptions(Becker, 1963).West and Farrington (1977) have provided the most widely cited data in support ofthelabelling hypothesis. However, stigma and the adverse publicity which producesit are more unqualifiedly advantageous when channelled against misconduct bypowerful corporations.Stigma does not push law breaking corporations further and further into acriminal self-conception.While one meets people who have a self-conceptionas athief, a safecracker, a prostitute, a pimp, a drug runner, and even a hit man, howoften does one come across a person or a company with a self-conceptionas acorporate criminal? Corporations and their officers respond to bad publicity withmoral indignation and denials, not with assertions that if you think I'mbad, 1'11really show you how bad I can be, as common delinquents sometimes do.Given the limited efficacy of formal social control against corporate offenders(Stone, 1975; Clinard and Yeager, 1980; Braithwaite, 1980) informal social controlis a11 the more important. The present study of the role of adverse publicity intransformingindustrial healthin the Australian asbestos industry is oneof a numberof such case studies being compiled for a larger work (Fisse and Braithwaite, inpress). The present study does not typify the effect of adverse publicity on largecorporations: at this stage in the development of empirical understanding it isimpossible to typify how social control works against corporate misconduct.Nevertheless, the Australian asbestos scare does illustrate how control throughadverse publicity is possible- notthatsuch controlis.ubiquitous or typical, but thatit is possible.The study was made possible by the cooperation of James Hardie in allowing usto interview a number of employees from the managing-director down at thecompany'sSydney head office and Camellia plant. We are also grateful to the New