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Where Is the Moral Indignation Over Corporate Crime?

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Regulating Corporate Criminal Liability

Abstract

Neo-liberalists promise a just and measured response from the state to corporate crime without resort to the force of a “criminal” justice. The argument is that there is more than enough justice done in administrative and civil regulatory regimes. In this contribution, I argue that this promise of justice done is betrayed. Evidence of this betrayal is found in the absence of any genuine moral indignation over corporate wrongdoing. Asking questions such as why there is so little moral disapprobation over corporate crime, and how is corporate moral integrity laundered, lead to a simple but important conclusion. These multi-stakeholder games serve and support a regulatory equilibration. This equilibration maintains the status quo of a system tilted in favor of corporations of scale and power, and fails to prompt the emotions necessary to support a strong sense of the wrong in corporate criminal wrongdoing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hasnas (2005), pp. 187ff.; Hasnas (2006, 2009), pp. 1329ff.

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., Reich (2007).

  3. 3.

    Redish and Siegal (2013), pp. 1447ff.

  4. 4.

    Laufer (2008).

  5. 5.

    Cf. Cullen et al. (1982), pp. 83ff.

  6. 6.

    Alexander (2012), p. 199.

  7. 7.

    Cf. Hagan (2010) and Laufer (2013), p. 679.

  8. 8.

    Beardsley (1970), pp. 161ff.

  9. 9.

    Sunstein (2009), pp. 405ff.

  10. 10.

    Cf. Jones (2007), pp. 768ff.

  11. 11.

    Sunstein (2009), pp. 405ff.

  12. 12.

    Fingarette (1963), p. 118.

  13. 13.

    Sunstein (2009), pp. 405ff.

  14. 14.

    Johnson and Newmeyer (1975), pp. 82ff; Greenwald and Krieger (2006), pp. 945ff.; Jolls and Sunstein (2006), pp. 969ff.

  15. 15.

    Eberhardt et al. (2006), pp. 383ff.

  16. 16.

    Eberhardt et al. (2006).

  17. 17.

    See, e.g., Sunstein et al. (2002), pp. 1153ff; McCaffery et al. (1995), pp. 1341ff.; Schkade et al. (2000), pp. 1139ff.

  18. 18.

    See, Rossi et al. (1974); Gottfredson et al. (1980), pp. 26ff.; Evans et al. (1993), pp. 85ff.; Rosenmerkel (2001), pp. 308ff.

  19. 19.

    Cullen et al. (1982), p. 94.

  20. 20.

    Piquero et al. (2008), pp. 291ff. To say that these data reveal a commensurate seriousness for white collar and street crimes would be a vast overstatement. Research exploring the seriousness of white collar “offenses” often offers subjects offense scenarios that are not criminal offenses. When researchers are good about selecting criminal offenses, though, they are rarely corporate offenses. Not attending to the criminal law and, at the same time, recognizing differences between the acts of agents and those of the entity, make this research difficult to place in the overall discussion of moral indignation.

  21. 21.

    Hansimaier (2013), pp. 515ff.; LaGrange et al. (1992), pp. 311ff.; Garofalo and Laub (1979), pp. 242ff.

  22. 22.

    Garofalo (1981), p. 840.

  23. 23.

    Skogan (1986), pp. 203ff.

  24. 24.

    Liska et al. (1982), pp. 760ff.

  25. 25.

    Manhattan U.S. Attorney and FBI Assistant Director-In-Charge Announce Insider Trading Charges Against Four SAC Capital Management Companies and SAC Portfolio Manager, July 25, 2013, available at: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/?m=07&y=2013/ (12.2.2014).

  26. 26.

    None of this is to suggest, of course, that law enforcement lacks a desire or even resolve to bring about justice in cases of corporate wrongdoing. The disconnect among desire, resolve, and commitment of resources simply reflects a very different reality.

  27. 27.

    See, Laufer (1999), pp. 1343ff.

  28. 28.

    The construct of authenticity, with differing roots in existential philosophy, psychoanalytic schools of thought, and classical literature, extends to corporations with all the usual anthropomorphic and ontological questions and concerns. Even so, the word “authenticity,” according to Trilling, first referred to material and immaterial “things” and not persons. Its metaphorical use began in the sixteenth century. See, Trilling (1972).

  29. 29.

    If the appearance of corporate authenticity is nothing more than a guise or pretense, then its expression is instrumental and strategic. While nuanced differences in appearance may make an appearance of authenticity and inauthenticity indistinguishable, I suggest that corporations fall along a behavioral continuum from opacity (i.e., where firms are characteristically obscure, elusive, and dense) to transparency (i.e., organizations that are open with communications, frank, candid, and forthcoming), sincerity (i.e., firms that act, as a means to an end, without pretense and dissimulation), and finally authenticity (i.e., companies that, as an end in itself, align their decisions, policies, and actions with actual desires, motivations, and intentions).

  30. 30.

    Codes, compliance programs, and the products from a cottage industry of ethics consultancies are part of an overall regulatory prescription but remain of questionable value if behavioral compliance is the dependent variable.

  31. 31.

    The task for firms, more specifically, is one of genuinely aligning their corporate vision, leadership, culture, value propositions, operations, and decisions with the expression of their collective moral sentiments, whether conceived as a sense of citizenship, integrity, or a sense of social responsibility. This task is quite challenging given the increasing range of incentives offered companies for voluntary social initiatives and evidence of regulatory compliance. Calls for a social conscience from non-governmental organizations, non-profits, and activist organizations make this challenge that much more potent.

  32. 32.

    The number of white collar crime prosecutions, combining all federal enforcement agencies, is remarkably stable over time—with between 8,000 and 9,000 cases per year. This is a true equilibrium given the number of referring agencies and organizations. Interesting, recent data on white collar cases originating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation show a decline or slump. See, e.g., Trac data [available at: http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/crim/331/ (12.2.2014)].

  33. 33.

    Laufer and Strudler (2007), pp. 1307ff.

  34. 34.

    Government Accountability Office (2005).

  35. 35.

    Cullen et al. (2009).

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Acknowledgments

My appreciation to Nien-he Hsieh, Eric Orts, and Diana Robertson for their comments on earlier drafts of this contribution.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    William S. Laufer

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  1. William S. Laufer
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Correspondence to William S. Laufer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

    Dominik Brodowski

  2. ROXIN Rechtsanwälte LLP, München, Germany

    Manuel Espinoza de los Monteros de la Parra

  3. University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Germany

    Klaus Tiedemann

  4. Faculty of Law, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

    Joachim Vogel

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Laufer, W.S. (2014). Where Is the Moral Indignation Over Corporate Crime?. In: Brodowski, D., Espinoza de los Monteros de la Parra, M., Tiedemann, K., Vogel, J. (eds) Regulating Corporate Criminal Liability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05993-8_3

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