Legitimate Business Research Articles

A Commonsian approach to crime: the Mafia and the economic power to withhold

Abstract This paper is a plea for an institutionalist approach to crime. The argument is based on the Italian Mafia’s infiltration of legitimate businesses. The focus is on the power dimension of this infiltration. I begin by emphasising how the traditional branch of crime economics is unable to correctly address this issue. I then use the tools provided by Commons, especially his definition of property and the capacity to withhold and his distinction between will-in-vacuo and will-in-action. Access to property rights over productive entities for Mafiosi provides a perfect illustration of how the capacity to hold rights turns into a power to withhold them from others. Legal Mafia-owned enterprises should not be seen as a step toward normalisation of the Mafia, but rather as a mark of the extension of their criminal power.

RRI and Corporate Stakeholder Engagement: The Aquadvantage Salmon Case

Declining public trust in science and innovation triggered the emergence and development of the responsible research and innovation (RRI) concept among policymakers and academics. Engaging stakeholders in the early phases of innovation processes has been identified as a major driver of inclusive, responsible, and sustainable development. Firms however have often adopted practices entirely opposite to those being advocated within the RRI framework, namely, reducing external interaction with stakeholders, focusing on exclusive communication with the scientific community and legal authorities while avoiding the social spotlight. We illustrate these practices, their causes and consequences using the case of the Aquadvantage salmon, the first genetically modified (GM) animal approved to petition for the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for human consumption. We find that such practices heighten the risk of social backlash, being undesirable from the perspective of both the organizations involved and society at large. Stakeholder engagement remains necessary in order to gain the minimum social acceptance required for contentious innovative products to enter the market. However, stakeholder engagement must be selective, focused on pragmatic organizations whose aims and interests are sufficiently broad to potentially align with corporate interests. Strategic stakeholder engagement offers a meeting point between the transformative aspirations of RRI framework proponents and legitimate business interests.

The Legality of Legacy Business Practices in Antitrust

There is void in the literature at the intersection of antitrust law and legacy business practices. This issue has come to forefront with Epic Games’ antitrust suit against Apple for its App Store policies, which have been in place ever since the online marketplace opened in 2008. The same issues are at the center of the current Apple v. Pepper litigation and in regulatory proposals to alter Apple’s business practices both at the state and federal levels. Legacy conduct has also played a role in the Supreme Court’s controversial Ohio v. American Express decision and the Ninth Circuit’s FTC v. Qualcomm decision. This raises a question as to how antitrust should treat long-standing business practices—practices that this Article labels “legacy conduct”—that initially were benign or even procompetitive, but which come under heavy scrutiny once the firm employing it obtains considerable market power. The fundamental question raised here is whether the fact that a product has become highly successful turns a previously legitimate business practice into one that antitrust should treat as objectionable. This Article contends that three fundamental considerations should govern the proper assessment of cases involving legacy conduct under a rule of reason analysis. Further, this Article advances a policy recommendation that legacy conduct instituted long before a firm achieves substantial market power (particularly at the time of entry) and is common across competitors who do not themselves possess substantial market power, should be considered probative evidence that the practice is procompetitive. When these conditions are satisfied, defendants should be afforded a substantially reduced burden in proving the restraint is procompetitive under a rule of reason analysis commensurate with the strength of the legacy evidence.

소수주식 매도청구의 경영상 목적

소수주식 매도청구의 경영상 목적

Criminological Features and Determination Specifics of Modern Tax Crimes

The author analyzes statistical information on tax crimes, the causes of the fluctuation of their quantitative parameters, and the impact of the economic downturn on tax crimes. Data characterizing the personality of tax offenders are presented. Determinants of tax crimes are examined. The author studies data that reflect the impact of the economic downturn of 2015-2016 and the subsequent stabilization of the economy on the observance of tax obligations. The key determinants of tax crimes that constitute its causal complex are recognized to be self-interest, a desire to get excess profit, and a reluctance to conduct business using common rules. Modern tax crimes have features typical of «white collar» crimes: openness of committing crimes that are made to look like legitimate business activities; use of the intellectual potential of highly qualified specialists for the development and improvement of criminal tax strategies, protection of criminal actions against exposure and prosecution; considerable material damage from crimes; long-term character of criminal activities; focus on using the advantages connected with tax evasion in competition. The author analyzes the norm of legal liability for breach of the law on taxes and duties. It is noted that the gains of tax evasion are higher than the material losses that could be incurred if the fact is exposed. The bigger the amount of uncollected taxes, the less significant the criminal law punitive sanctions are in comparison with it. There is not risk of becoming a subject of criminal prosecution for ignoring the duty to obtain documentation for business activities, for hiding or destroying accounting documentation. The author shows that the insufficiency of criminal law measures of restraining legal deviations regarding tax obligations and the defects of normative legal regulation of legal liability for tax delicts become the determinants of tax crimes because they promote the idea of impunity. Besides, the drawbacks of legal liability for violating the legislation on taxes and duties create conditions for the self-determination of tax crimes and for the formation of shadow economy in the Russian Federation.

An analysis of highly-cited scholarship in business and management education: Findings and future agendas

Numerous events have fostered the increased legitimacy of business and management education (BME) scholarship in recent years. These include the rise of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) expectations in various key BME journals, and new AACSB International – The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business standards regarding pedagogical research, assurance of learning, and teaching impact. An important next step in furthering BME scholarship is exploring the domain's prominent topics and identifying attendant future research opportunities and issues. Using the TxtViz® textual cluster analysis software, this paper investigates the content, sizes, and relative positions of the 15 key BME themes identified by Arbaugh et al. (2019) as well as derives Kuhnian-based (1962) implications for the field's future growth and development. In so doing, this study seeks to help scholars gain a finer-grained understanding of the state of the field and identify key domain-level research agenda issues as the BME domain continues to evolve.

Legal viable options to incessant closure of Nigeria’s international borders

ABSTRACT Just like in 1984 and 2003 when Nigeria’s borders were closed to the neighbouring countries, the closure of Nigeria’s land border since August 2019 which is intended to combat smuggling of goods and to boost manufacturing and agricultural production has been subject of controversy. This paper observes that although the border closure may have brought some advantages in the area of increased revenue, numerous seizures of illegal materials and encourages local production of rice, the appraisal of the legal, economic, political and security implications however reveal that despite the perceived advantages, it may not be the best option. It concedes that the closure of the Nigerian borders is an exercise within its sovereign authority; but however, notes that the effect of an arbitrary border closure without sufficient notice adversely affects the interests of genuine businessmen as this amounts to a breach of their fundamental right of doing legitimate business across the border. It recommends viable legal options which the government can explore in line with standard global practice such as systemic efforts to boost the economy, by ensuring effective control, management, monitoring and protection of the border. It calls for regional integration and less burdensome procedures without undermining national interests.

Say 'No' to Discrimination, 'Yes' to Accommodation: Why States Should Prohibit Discrimination of Workers Who Use Cannabis for Medical Purposes

This Article addresses the question of how the law should treat medical cannabis in the employment context. Using Colorado as a primary example, we argue that states such as Colorado should amend their constitutions and legislate to provide employment protections for employees who are registered medical cannabis cardholders or registered caregivers. Part I briefly traces the legal regulation of cannabis from an unregulated medicine known as cannabis to a highly regulated illicit substance known as marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. Our travail through this history reveals, unsurprisingly, an increasing demonization of cannabis throughout the twentieth century. That socio-legal demonization likely hindered the medical development of cannabis for at least a century. American society’s negative perception of cannabis began to yield, however, as scientific evidence of cannabis’s healing capacity gained popularity. Increased demand for medicinal cannabis resulted in a clash of perceptions between marijuana, the demonic influencer of immoral or criminal behavior, and cannabis, the angelic healer. It is this cognitive dissidence that helps explain the strange result of Brandon’s case. Part II surveys the role of employment law in protecting employees who use cannabis for medical purposes. We explore the public policy exception to at-will employment and various federal and state disability statutes. We conclude that judges can and should apply these measures to protect workers who may be vulnerable to discharge because of their cannabis use. Democracies cannot and should not depend on judges to make important changes in public policies, even when those changes are to common law doctrines created by judges in the first place. Part III surveys two states’ statutes—those of Nevada and Oklahoma—that protect workers who use medical cannabis from employment termination. Applying the knowledge gained from Part II, we collated what we believed to be the best language from the statutes of those two states and rewrote Colorado’s constitution in a manner that would account for employees’ interests and employer’s legitimate concerns. Part IV acknowledges that employers may be slow to change their medical cannabis policies. With this reality in mind, we review some best practices as to how employers can accommodate cannabis use among its workers, including appropriate exceptions to an accommodation policy that take into account employer’s legitimate business interests without cutting into the essential accommodations medical cannabis users need to become or remain productive members of the U.S. workforce.

The Effects of Stolen-Goods Markets on Crime: Pawnshops, Property Theft, and the Gold Rush of the 2000s

AbstractThis paper investigates the effects of stolen-goods markets on crime. I focus on pawnshops, a legitimate business often associated with the illicit trade of stolen property. Within-county e...

Exploring The Dynamic Interrelationships Between Stigmatization and Legitimation in Social Media

Stigmatization of organizations can threaten their sheer existence. However, despite being stigmatized, organizations often survive and even thrive, indicating that they are, in fact, legitimized. With this article we study the dynamic interrelationship between stigmatization and legitimation processes during a series of scandals in the financial sector. We adopt a communication-based audience perspective and analyse how audiences transform legitimizing conversations through targeted labelling, vilifying, and mobilising against banks in social media. We observe how this stigmatization process reinforces itself through a vicious loop, and later becomes diluted through the re-emergence of legitimizing conversations that render banks as a broader legitimate business category, yet how partial stigmatization remains. Our analysis based on 2.8 million tweets contributes to our understanding of stigma emergence and dilution based on an exploration of the complex interrelationship between stigmatization and legitimation in the so far little understood social media arena of Twitter.

Fake Trademark Specimens: An Empirical Analysis

United States trademark law requires that a mark be used in commerce for it to qualify for registration at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Applicants prove that they have met the use requirement by submitting to the PTO photographic specimens of their use of the mark in commerce. This Piece reports the results of new empirical work showing that an appreciable number of U.S. trademark applications originating in China include fraudulent specimens of use. In particular, with respect to use-based applications originating in China that were filed at the PTO in 2017 solely for apparel goods, we estimate that 66.9% of such applications included fraudulent specimens. Yet 59.8% of these fraudulent applications proceeded to publication, and 38.9% then proceeded to registration. If these applications are representative of the overall population of Chinese-origin applications in that year, then approximately 14.0% of all such use-based applications filed with the PTO in 2017 were fraudulent. Fraudulent registrations worsen the problems of trademark depletion and clutter, undermine the integrity of the trademark register, and hurt legitimate businesses that may benefit from using these marks. We therefore recommend legislative action to make it easier for third parties and the PTO to cull these marks from the register and systematic improvement by the PTO to ensure that applications with fraudulent specimens are not registered in the first instance.

Detection of Corporate Frauds

Corporate fraud is most commonly performed by taking the advantage of the sensitive & confidential information and also the valuable assets, using them to maximise the gains. There are many methods that help predict fraud before they occur. These activities are often hidden behind legitimate business transactions and exchanges to hide it from the authorities. This paper focuses on various tools which can be used to detect such activities how they are administered. Fraud is defined under section 447 of the companies act 2013 which says that “fraud in relation to affairs of a company or a body corporate, includes any act, omission, concealment of any fact or abuse of position committed by any person or any other person with the connivance in any manner, with intent to deceive, to gain undue advantage from, or to injure the interests of, the company or its shareholders or its creditors or any other person, whether or not there is any wrongful gain or wrongful loss” But in order to prevent fraud from happening, one must know what it is, what are its consequences, how they are committed and how can it be prevented. The information that we obtain from these exercises should be put back into the system so that the fraud prevention measures can implemented, and monitoring can be done to prevent a reoccurrence. The detection of them is directly related to their prevention. There are various methods for detecting fraud and reporting it to the authorities. Poor corporate governance and internal control are the mains reasons of frauds occurring, preventing them would ensure a healthy financial statement. “Inside a business firm, the corporate managers play a primary role for fraud prevention and detection withing a business firm but employees have an important role to play as well” . “Effective employee training, thorough screening and internal control, board oversight” . There many ways in which corporate fraud may be detected. They are, internal audit, external audit, whistle blowing, forensic assessment etc.

Analisis terhadap Pencegahan Tindak Pidana Pencucian Uang oleh Bank Negara Indonesia

Money laundering can undermine the national economy as it is very closely linked to the belief that one or another country against the policy of the State. Usually money laundering illicit money was made by mixing with legitimate money so that a legitimate business will not compete with companies who are honest, undermining the integrity of the financial markets due to the financial institutions (financial institutions) even rely on the proceeds of crime can face the danger of liquidity; resulting in a loss of government control of the economy of a country whose policies result in lack of confidence in other countries against its policies. In carrying out its supervisory duties USU Bank BNI has implemented Law No. 8 of 20110 on AML with Bank Indonesia Regulation No. 11/28 / PBI / by applying the principle to know the Customer and step in stages in accordance with Circular No. 11/31 / DPNP Year 2009 Standard Guidelines for the Implementation of Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism for Banks

Humans and machines need to collaborate to tackle financial crime

Economic growth has relied for hundreds of years on technology to allow the aggregation of capital and labour and exploitation of knowledge at a distance, through developments such as movable type, the limited liability company and the telegraph. Technology has played a vital part in enabling the trust that underpins, allowing parties to deal with individuals and businesses they have never met. Economic crime is fundamentally about abuse of that trust. Whether in the direct perpetration of a fraud on a buyer or seller, or by using systems designed to assist legitimate business to aid criminals by laundering the proceeds of crime, technology underpins most economic crime - enabling, facilitating and disguising it.

Can Common Business Practices Ever Be Anticompetitive? Redefining Monopolization

For most of its modern history, antitrust law distinguished between normal competition and monopolization by looking for merit, legitimate business justifications, or efficiencies in the challenged business conduct. These proxies were seen as appropriate because they served antitrust law's welfare objectives well. However, the universal adoption of these proxies has overshadowed significant shortcomings, chief among them being that firms do not think in terms of legitimate business justifications or efficiencies, but rather in terms of long‐term sustainability and appropriation of value. As a result, antitrust law becomes detached from the very subjects it purports to regulate. Against the backdrop of the recent resurgence of enforcement activity, particularly involving tech giants, this article attempts a conceptualization of monopolization that does not revolve around merit in any form or function. Instead it introduces the proxy of commonness of business practices to determine their legality. This helps highlight the importance of considering “how things are done” in the relevant market, and helps reground antitrust law in business realities, which can enhance the heuristic mechanism of distinguishing between normal and anticompetitive practices. To prove this point the article develops an error test framework, through which it compares current tests with the proposed test in terms of their error footprint and concludes that the integration of the commonness parameter delivers better results. Ultimately, the inquiry undertaken herein is not only about constructing a conception of normal competition different from the only standard we currently have, that is, variants of merit, but also about shifting the conversation from how to fine‐tune existing standards to how to capture a more complete conception of competition.

Соціальна обумовленість встановлення кримінальної відповідальності за протидію законній господарській діяльності

У статті проаналізовано соціальну обумовленість кримінальної відповідальності за протидію законній господарській діяльності. Досліджено суспільну небезпеку таких діянь, співвідношення позитивних і негативних наслідків криміналізації, можливість боротьби з діяннями за допомогою кримінально-правових заходів.

Public dilemmas about security measures in the field of civil aviation

New security measures in civil aviation have been introduced as a consequence of security incidents in the past decades and to prevent potential threats in the future. Some of these measures have provoked serious negative public reactions. This paper aims to analyse the current civil aviation security framework and related public dilemmas about individual security measures, such as body scanners, the exchange of passenger data and passenger profiling. Based on the analysis of media records, press releases and debates in the European parliament on civil aviation security, the paper confirms the argument that that civil aviation security is conflicted between the varied technical possibilities to improve security and the unintended negative effects on the public. Implementation of new security measures needs to consider social concerns, such as privacy, human rights and health, if legitimacy of civil aviation business is to be retained.

A legitimate business? Representations of privatised probation in England and Wales

The Transforming Rehabilitation reforms implemented in England & Wales in 2014 witnessed the transfer of responsibility for a large proportion of the work of the public sector probation service to 21 newly created Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs), which were contracted out to a range of providers dominated by private sector interests. This part-privatisation of probation services has raised important questions about the legitimacy of the new organisations in the eyes of both internal and external audiences, and about the ‘legitimation work’ that the CRCs might engage in to address any legitimacy deficits they themselves perceive. This article presents the findings of an analysis of the websites of all 21 CRCs, and considers what these externally facing representations of the CRCs suggest about legitimation work in the private probation sector. Our analysis suggests that CRCs use some of the same strategies of legitimation that have been found in another ‘tainted trade’ – the private security industry – and are similarly ambivalent about what – and to whom – they are marketing their ‘business’. We suggest that our analysis sheds new light on old questions about how the somewhat intangible goods of probation work can be captured and communicated to a mixed constituency of potential stakeholders, as well as raising new questions about the role of websites (and other marketing materials) in that endeavour.

Compliance behaviour from the holistic human nature perspective

PurposePrevious studies on tax compliance have not internally failed to consider why individuals avoid tax payments. The purpose of this paper is to explore the compliance behaviour of Indonesian taxpayers from holistic human nature perspectives including their rational, social and spiritual values.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts the tabayyun approach, an interpretive conceptualised methodology using Islamic knowledge to explore taxpayers' rational, social and spiritual realities.FindingsTax compliance is influenced by holistic factors: personal economic rational, social consensus and spiritual beliefs. Rational taxpayers distrust tax authority and see tax payments as an economic decision (i.e. costs and benefits) that reduces/increases wealth. So, they tend to avoid or reconfigure payments. Opposite to economic rationally is the societal pressure upon taxpayers to converge to being an acceptable citizen with legitimate businesses. Under this view, no mistrust against tax authority exists. As for the spiritual factor, tax payments are seen as religious duties like zakat that ought to be paid for achieving spiritual alleviation.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the research approach, this study results may lack generalisation. Future research can expand broader understanding of religious belief in corporation with compliance behaviour.Practical implicationsIn the tax policy context, this study recommends to take into consideration religious levy being included in the tax system. This study also argues substituting tax with zakat. In Indonesia, religious levy takes more essential roles in the spiritual domain rather than economical domain.Social implicationsIt is difficult to expect tax compliance to be an internal compliance because the source of the command is of an external origin. It is considered as a new concept of wealth distribution that comes from an internal attribute. For states that have religious population as Indonesia, religious values become communal bonds that more dominantly form self-identity at both physical and mental levels. Hence, it is very essential for the state to consider the inclusion of religious values or teachings to the regulation, if the state wants such regulation to be adhered significantly by people. The collection instrument whose bonds originated in religious moral/spiritual values can raise the awareness and compliance voluntarily because the command source is internal and autonomous.Originality/valueThis study fills the gaps in the taxation literature by incorporating a spiritual perspective, instead of rational and social domains.

The Blip of Interest in the Organic Theory

At the start of the 20th century there was a flourish of interest in the theory that the corporation is a kind of organism made out of other multicellular organisms, in the same way multicellular organisms are made out of cellular ones. This theory of the corporation came to be known as the 'organic theory'. The story of this flourish of interest in the organic theory was told by Harvard Law School Professor Morton Horwitz in a 1985 essay called 'Santa Clara Revisited: The Development of Corporate Theory'. Horwitz's account of the flourish of interest has been hugely influential, and, if the story of the flourish is known, it is generally through his work. The argument made by Horwitz in his essay was this: the role of the flourish of interest in the organic theory at the start of the 20th century was to help to legitimate big business. This talk revisits Horwitz's account. It shows that it is, in fact, highly misleading. It shows that the organic theory was never used in the way Horwitz suggests and that, if anything, the effect of the theory was the opposite - rather than helping to legitimate big business, it, in fact, opposed it. Hence, as I discuss, the story of the flourish of interest as understood in current academic discourse requires remedying. This is the text of a talk given at the Corporate Law Teachers Association 2020 conference, hosted by Monash Business School.