Suite violence: Why managers muder and corporations kill

Abstract

This paper examines the area of organizational deviance leading to avoidable death, injury and harm. Corporate activity creates a large number of victims and yet this area is neglected in the literature. Evidence indicates that business kills, maims and poisons; that we are dealing with organizational deviance; but that iy is difficult, legally and organizationally, to pin down precisely the motives and behhaviour of managers in suchh cases. Significant corporate violence is rooted in a multiplicity of situational factors, the embeddness of socio-economic activity and post-hoc rationalizations. The paper highlights one specific strand in business deviance; how structure and culture shape the managerial mind and influence behaviour in ways that foster deviance and cause harm. A range of social-psychological processes are examined that open opportunities, and rationalizations, for rule-breaking. Corporations can create and environment that leads to risk-taking, and even recklessness, resulting in high casualties and severe harm. Companies then get away with ``murder'' because the law and the courts are not geared to organizational deviance and corporate violence. The organization causes the deviance and then forms the legal and institutional defence against facing up to the full consequences of the deaths, injuries and suffering among victims.