Institutional Anomie Theory Research Articles

Institutional Anomie Theory and Country-Level Public Corruption

Public-sector corruption siphons trillions of dollars from the global economy and contributes to social instability. Institutional Anomie Theory, with its focus on the links between social institutions, individualistic and achievement-oriented cultural norms, and crime, offers a possible framework for understanding corruption. This possibility is contrasted with research indicating that individualistic values and free markets reduce corruption. Using twenty years of data from 83 countries, this study finds institutional imbalance toward the economy is associated with higher levels of corruption. The lowest levels of corruption are found in highly individualistic countries, though institutional imbalance had a strong positive effect on corruption in such countries. Conversely, corruption is high in collectivistic countries regardless of institutional imbalance. Findings underscore the importance of institutional and cultural configurations, and their interplay, for corruption. We discuss the implications of our study for Institutional Anomie Theory and directions for future research.

Cross-country comparison analysis of individual and institutional factors of anomie and online offending

This article addresses the gap in the literature by empirically assessing a cross-national comparison of institutional anomie theory (IAT) and self-reported cyberoffending. We used survey data from Finland, Hungary, and the United States to examine the relationship between institutional anomie and cybercrime. Each country represents different types of societies, which makes them interesting cases for cross-national comparison. With Hungary representing a conservative welfare regime, Finland a social democratic welfare regime, and the United States a liberal welfare regime, we predict that the more political regimes intervene in economic relations and support non-economic institutions, the less applicable IAT's variables will be in predicting cybercrime perpetration. In line with these predictions, binomial regression models suggest that IAT works best in the United States, where individualism, achievement, and fetishism of money increased the indices of cybercrime offending. IAT variables were less useful in predicting cybercrime offending in the other nations. Yet, also in line with our prediction, family has a strong external control function in Finland, protecting participants from cybercrime offending. However, no IAT indexes achieved statistical significance in Hungary, where a work-based welfare system suppresses family-related values. Education has a mixed effect on cybercrime offending. Thus, IAT is valuable for understanding cybercrime offending; however, it should be examined in more countries with social institutions and individual value systems different from that of the United States.

The decline of the non‐Hispanic white population in the United States of America

AbstractObjectivesThe question of a declining non‐Hispanic white (NHW) population has sparked debate in the United States. In examining this question, three bodies of research have emerged. One group reports that the decline is real, a second argues that it is an illusion, and the third provides evidence that the decline is concentrated within socio‐economic segments of the NHW population. We use the third groups’ insight as the starting point for our research objective.MethodsIn conjunction with data from Census Bureau sources, we use a series of Regression Models in this inquiry.ResultsOur results show that the decline of the NHW population is real and related to factors embedded in the institutional anomie theory (IAT) framework.ConclusionsWe conclude that the IAT framework is a suitable approach for examining the question of NHW population decline. However, we suggest that future research consider refining our approach by: (1) using sub‐state areas as the units of analyses; (2) examining changes in the NHW population relative to lagged changes in the IAT framework at both the state and sub‐state levels; (3) placing our framework into an “algorithmic modeling approach” that employs machine learning; and (4) developing anomie predictors.

Accountability Journalism and Corporate Illegality: An Application of Institutional Anomie Theory

Accountability Journalism and Corporate Illegality: An Application of Institutional Anomie Theory

Assessing Regional Variation in Support for the Radical Right-Wing Party ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD)—A Novel Application of Institutional Anomie Theory across German Districts

The paper at hand aims to address a research gap by examining the spatial impact of economic and non-economic institutions on regional variation in the support for the German populist far-right party ‘Alternative for Germany (AfD)’. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on institutional anomie theory, the study explores the relationship between economic dominance—economic inequality and economic strength—and regional AfD vote share, as well as the role of non-economic institutions in shaping support for the party. Using various regional indicators, the study assesses the strength of different institutions and their impact on the AfD’s electoral results in the year 2021 across 401 German districts (NUTS 3-level). The results point to significant differences between eastern and western Germany in the analysis of regional populist voting patterns. Economic dominance emerges as a stronger predictor of the AfD’s vote share in eastern regions. However, the findings on the protective effect of strong non-economic institutions against AfD voting are ambiguous and partly contrary to theoretical expectations. Overall, the study’s findings show that the newly introduced indicators deduced from institutional anomie theory contribute to the existing literature to help better understand regional variances in AfD support. Furthermore, the study contributes to the existing literature on the rise of contemporary radical right movements by employing Karl Polanyi’s framework of ‘disembedded’ markets. In doing so, it sheds light on the complex interplay between social change, anomic tendencies, and the growth of radical right movements in capitalist societies.

Jump to platform faster? Gender, institutional change, and pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempt

PurposeThe authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and social institutional changes on women's pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. The authors theorize that women are culturally discouraged to pursue pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts or wealth accumulation in a specific culture. This discouragement creates an anomic strain that motivates women to deviate from cultural prescriptions by engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts at a faster speed. Building on this premise, the authors hypothesize that changes in social institutions facilitate the means of achievement for women due to the potential opportunities inherent in such institutional changes.Design/methodology/approachUsing a randomly selected sample of 1,431 registered active individual users with a minimum of 10,000 followers on a leading entertainment live-streaming platform in the People's Republic of China, the authors examined a unique mix of cultural and institutional changes and their effects on the speed of women's engagement in live-streaming platform activity.FindingsThe authors find support for the impact of the interaction between changes in social institution conditions and cultural values. Unexpectedly, the authors also find a negative impact of cultural values on women's speed of engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts.Originality/valueThe authors add institutional change to the IAT framework and provide a novel account for the variation in the pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts by women on the platform.

Institutional anomie theory and gambling-related crime: An empirical test in Macau

To date, scholars have rarely applied institutional anomie theory to gambling-related crime. Using time series data on the rates of illegal gambling, money laundering, organised crime, and drug-related crime, as well as various indicators of the economy and noneconomic social institutions, this study tested the applicability of institutional anomie theory to gambling-related crime. The study found that unemployment positively related to organised crime and drug-related crime. GDP per capita is positively associated with illegal gambling crime, organised crime, and drug-related crime. However, all social institutional variables failed to predict gambling-related crime. Moreover, for the interaction effects, this finding also provided limited and mixed support for the theory. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The cross-national association between institutional imbalance, national culture, and illegal fishing

ObjectivesExtant research has examined various factors as driving illegal fishing at the country level. Prior research, however, lacked a cohesive theoretical framework to explain the prevalence of this practice at the macro level. The current study borrows concepts and measures from Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT), namely national culture and the relative strength of economic and non-economic social institutions (i.e., institutional imbalance), to test if this framework can account for illegal fishing. MethodsWe used data from 72 countries between 1995 and 2016 and fixed effects regression models to estimate the longitudinal association between institutional imbalance towards economic institutions and illegal fishing. We then estimated how different configurations of national culture (i.e., individualistic, or collectivistic; cooperative, or competitive) moderate that association. ResultsAbout 36.67% of all fishing in countries and years in our data is illegal. Institutional imbalance has a strong positive average association with the prevalence of illegal fishing. However, while that association is particularly strong in collectivistic countries, it is week to nonexistent in individualistic countries. ConclusionsMost findings are consistent with the predictions of IAT, particularly regarding the institutional components of the theory, as countries which place an excessive emphasis on economic institutions tend to have more illegal fishing. It contradicts the theory, however, that individualism is protective against the deleterious influence of institutional imbalance. We explore this inconsistency in light of the particularities of fishing and discuss possible implications.

Formal and informal institutions and fair value opinion shopping: an institutional anomie theory perspective

PurposeThe objective of this study is to examine how formal and informal institutional environment influences managers’ fair value opinion shopping behaviour in the largest International Financial Reporting Standards adopter, China.Design/methodology/approachTo test the hypotheses, I conduct a 2 × 2 between-subject randomised experiment since the inferences about cause and effect are important in this study. The between-subject experimental situations are manipulated on the basis of the financial condition of companies and boards’ oversight.FindingsI find that managers are likely to seek favourable fair value opinions from external valuation professionals when they are under the weak boards’ oversight and high stress to meet the regulation target of the China Securities Regulatory Commission. These results are more pronounced for managers with higher both rent-seeking and favour-seeking guanxi orientations are more likely to engage in fair value opinion shopping.Originality/valueConsistent with theoretical analysis of Balfoort et al. (2017), this study provides empirical evidence that guanxi influences the neutrality and faithful representation in fair value measurement in China. In addition, the findings extend Salzsieder’s study (2015) and reflect the context-embeddedness nature of accounting.

The Rise of the Right-Wing Good Party (İYİP) in Turkey: Authoritarian Turn, Anomie, and Regulatory Nostalgia

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the rise of a newly established nationalist right-wing political party in Turkey—namely the Good Party (İYİP)—with respect to the concept of anomie. In contrast to the mainstream literature, which exclusively concentrates on the concept of populism in its analysis of the rise of right-wing political parties, this study explains the İYİP’s advancement using Institutional Anomie Theory, along with the fall of the ‘Turkish Dream’, wherein the democratic and economic aspirations of the 2000s were hindered in the 2010s by the authoritarian turn and the entrenchment of the neoliberal economic order. In other words, a contradiction between historically embedded goals (democratization and wealth) and the political means exercised (authoritarian turn and neoliberalism) led to anomie in Turkey, which created a window of opportunity to be exploited by a right-wing political party. The article concludes, based on İYİP rhetoric, that the backlash against the authoritarian turn may surface in the form of regulatory nostalgia for the parliamentary system and exclusionary attitudes towards Syrians living in Turkey.

The Crisis in Local Newspapers and Organizational Wrongdoing: The Role of Community Social Connectedness

Drawing on institutional anomie theory, we examine how the crisis in local newspapers has induced organizational wrongdoings in local communities. We argue that, because local newspapers are the primary source of accountability journalism in local communities, their decline leads to an anomic state that increases the scale of organizational wrongdoing. We also investigate whether institutional complementarity helps overcome the anomic state: Due to functional similarity, community social connectedness compensates for the scarcity of local newspapers. Our analysis of U.S. metropolitan areas for the period of 2007–2015 reveals that the positive relationship between local newspaper scarcity and the scale of organizational wrongdoing is not present in all communities but does appear when a community lacks community social connectedness. We also find that this moderating role of community social connectedness is observed only for internal organizational wrongdoings that are less visible to the public than external ones.

Marketized mentality and instrumental offending: the overlooked roles of noneconomic institutions and relative deprivation in individual level institutional anomie theory

ABSTRACT This research examines the individual level extension to institutional anomie theory and explores the link between a marketized mentality and instrumental offending. Further, it investigates the direct roles that family, school and relative deprivation play in offending and probes their possible moderating impact on the relationship between a marketized mentality and illegal activities. Utilizing a street youth sample, the findings reveal that a marketized mentality in and of itself does not have a direct link to instrumental offending. Instead, the association between marketized mentality and offending emerges under conditions where individuals experience low family social control and high levels of relative deprivation. Relative deprivation, criminal peers, moral filters, prior offending, and low self-control also contribute directly to an increased probability of instrumental offending, while under certain conditions school social control decreases these probabilities. Findings are discussed, theoretical implications are outlined, and avenues for future research offered.

The evolution of the Nigerian prince scam

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the evolution of a particular variant of cyber fraud known as the Nigerian prince scam and to demonstrate its socio-cultural impact. These scams are also referred to as yahoo scams. This paper traces the history of the Nigerian prince scam and how the scheme has evolved over the years to become more sophisticated, audacious and damaging to its victims. Design/methodology/approach The analytic approach is conceptual, drawing on institutional anomie theory, social learning theory and routine activity theory to explain this unique typology of cybercrime. Data were collected and analysed from books, journal articles, newspaper articles and other electronic Web sources. Findings The ineffective political leadership of Nigeria’s present elected and past military leaders could be attributed to creating culturally induced pressures to secure monetary success by the scammers. A significant number of people involved in this malfeasance justify these crimes with the argument of being owed reparations for colonisation, which might explain why international and local agencies may not be effective at eradicating this crime problem. Originality/value Despite the continued perpetration of the Nigerian prince scam, current research has not presented an evolutionary view of this fraudulent operation. This paper adds to the literature by explaining the origins of the scam, how they have developed over time and how internet technology has advanced the sophistication of the scam.

The Societal Context of School-Based Bullying Victimization: An Application of Institutional Anomie Theory in a Cross-National Sample

ABSTRACT The present study examines cross-national variation in school-based bullying victimization. Specifically, we address whether decommodification, a concept implicated in Institutional Anomie Theory that measures the degree of a society’s social welfare protection, is a protective factor against school-based bullying victimization. To test this theory, we retrieve data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) questionnaire and combine this data with other sources capturing cross-national factors hypothesized to impact bullying victimization. The sample consists of 286,871 adolescents (with an average age of 15 years) attending 14,192 schools nested within 55 high-and-middle-income countries. We estimate multilevel regression models with three levels of analysis (student, school, and country), finding that countries with a greater degree of decommodification have lower rates of school-based bullying. Overall, our findings illustrate that the national level of social welfare protection, which had been previously neglected in this research literature, is a robust predictor of bullying victimization.

Not Just Another Test of Institutional Anomie Theory: Assessing Relative Institutional Imbalances

Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) proposes high violent crime rates are due partially to imbalances in societal institutions, specifically the dominance of the economy over non-economic institutions. Tests of IAT have focused largely on the absolute strength of the economy, which ignores the core argument of institutional imbalance and the possibility that institutional preferences may not be additive and limited. If one institution is strong, it does not mean other institutions are weak. We believe rigorous tests of IAT must include its central concept of relative institutional imbalance. Utilizing the World Values Survey for a sample of 74 nations, we created institutional imbalance ratios for each pairing of the economy with family, education, religion, and polity. We employed multiple regression to determine if our measures of institutional preferences were associated with homicide victimization rates. Results indicated only the Economic:Education institutional imbalance ratio was positively and significantly associated with national homicide rates.

The effect of cultural values on the strength of the relationship between interpersonal and organizational workplace deviance

Business research has generated an incomplete understanding of how the strength of the relationship between interpersonal and organizational workplace deviance varies across contexts. In this study, I explain that inconsistent results likely exist across study contexts due to country-level differences in cultural values that alter the strength of the relationship between interpersonal and organizational deviance. I use social exchange theory to explain why interpersonal and organizational deviance are distinct. Then, I use institutional anomie theory to explain that country-level social institutions alter the strength of the relationship between interpersonal and organizational deviance. Finally, I aggregate findings from 133 independent samples of primary data (k = 133, N = 34,746) so I can use meta-analysis to examine cultural values as moderators of this relationship. My findings demonstrate that cultural values provide a powerful explanation for how the strength of the relationship between interpersonal and organizational deviance differs so substantially across contexts.

Can institutional anomie theory predict victimization? An experimental survey examining institutional anomie and affinity fraud

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine whether victims of financial crimes are also affected by anomie. Fraud from supposed financial advisors leaves many victims feeling uncertain of their financial future and betrayed by people they trusted. This is felt even more when victims are betrayed by people in their own community. Previous research (see Hövermann et al. 2015a, 2015b, 2016, 2018) has found that individuals susceptible to the capitalistic values of the USA and other Western nations are more likely to cheat (Muftic, 2006), engage in rule-breaking (Zito, 2018) and believe in egoistic individuality (Hövermann et al. 2015a). This belief in these values could also increase the chance of victimization.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used an experimental survey to assess whether institutional anomie theory (IAT) can also affect victimization at the individual level.FindingsThe authors find support for Messner and Rosenfeld’s (2001) IAT. An interaction was present, which revealed that IAT is more predictive when individuals are high in financial need. When individuals are desperate, they will find whatever means possible to meet the expectations of the American Dream, even if it involves investing their life savings with a potential fraudster.Originality/valueThis paper examines IAT as it relates to victim behavior. Further, this paper links the techniques of offenders using shared social status (i.e. affinity) with criminological theory.

Sociological Structures and Accounting Misbehavior: An Institutional Anomie Theory Explanation of Restatements in Family Firms

This article studies the underinvestigated but fascinating issue of the sociological determinants of accounting misbehavior while focusing on an allegedly illicit accounting practice (i.e., restatement) in family- vs. nonfamily-controlled corporations. Under the framework of institutional anomie theory, we examined whether sociological structures (i.e., legal forces and cultural values) influence accounting errors inducing restatements. By applying a multivariate regression analysis to a sample of restating firms listed in 23 countries during the 2006 to 2014 period, we found that legal forces and cultural values significantly moderate the severity of accounting errors. The results of this study suggest that investors, managers, and policymakers should more fully consider the sociological structures of societies when debating the feasibility of corporate misbehaviors, as combining firm-level and country-level analyses could help to predict a firm’s accounting misbehaviors, such as more severe accounting errors.

Social institutions approach to women’s firm ownership and firm bribery activity: A study of small-sized firms in emerging markets

While the firm bribery phenomenon has received much attention, we do not yet know how women-owned firms deal with firm bribery. We, therefore, examined whether women’s firm ownership is positively related to firm bribery in emerging markets. We hypothesized that bribery may represent an avenue for women-owned firms to tackle obstacles unique to such markets. We base our arguments on institutional anomie theory’s (IAT) premise that firm bribery is the outcome of barriers to achievement. Additionally, we examined institutional moderators. Using a sample of firms from the Business Environment Survey and combining it with country-level data, our multilevel tests supported most of our cross-level hypotheses. Findings suggest that women's ownership in a firm alone has no significant effect on firm bribing behavior. However, this firm-level relationship is negatively moderated by three social institutions consistent with IAT. Implications of our findings and future research are discussed.

Marketization and crime in contemporary China: Puzzles for criminological theorizing*

AbstractThe purpose of my Sutherland Address is to explore the potential utility of elaborating and adapting the analytic framework of Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) to account for the macro‐social dynamics of crime in contemporary China. To do so, I situate the institutional dynamics of crime in China in comparative historical context and put forth a newly adapted formulation of IAT. I then illustrate the ways in which this adapted formulation of IAT can enhance the coherence of a rich body of research on crime in China by incorporating some of the empirical findings and insightful interpretations within an overarching theoretical framework. In addition, interrogating the applicability of IAT to the Chinese context draws attention to important gaps in the theory, thereby facilitating its further elaboration as well as promoting the development of general macro‐social theory in criminology.