Rethinking organizational crime and organizational criminology

Abstract

Organizational crime and organizational criminology, obviously, are, orshould be about ``organization''. This essay wants to explore what is goingon in contemporary ``organizations''; it wants to think through what iscurrently happening in today's organizations. It will argue thatcontemporary organizational life has arrived in a phase of transition.New forms, and new modalities of organizational morality are taking shape.So is organizational regulation. This, as will hopefully become clear, is ofimportance to organizational criminologists who, inevitably, though oftenimplicitly, have been researching and writing about organizational orbusiness ethics and morality for some time now. This essay suggests analternative way of conceptualizing life and regulation in contemporaryorganizations. It suggests a reading of contemporary organizations as clustersof labyrinthine networks – i.e. the raw materials and again the outcome oflabyrinthine moralities – in which – as Deleuze and Guattari had it – theOutside is always already potentially, though undecidably,Within. To students of organizational regulation, and organizationalcriminologists are amongst them, this essay argues that contemporaryorganizations are gradually turning into highly complex networks (of networks) thatare often inextricably interwoven with surrounding networks. This has aprofound impact on how organizational moralities emerge and develop, onon how these in turn impact on the contents and the orientation oforganizational action. This essay will argue that regulating contemporaryorganizatons is bound to be simultaneously much easier as well as muchmore complex than in a previous, ``bureaucratic'' age.