Abstract
Securing employee adherence to workplace rules and company policies is a key antecedent of successful functioning within organizations. It is important for companies to be able to effectively motivate rule following behavior among employees, i.e. to be able to limit white-collar crime. This chapter compares the utility of two approaches to securing such behavior. Those strategies are as follows: (1) the sanction-based command-and-control model and (2) self-regulation approaches that are linked to activating employee’s ethical judgments. Research findings suggest that, while command-and-control strategies influence employee behavior, self-regulatory strategies have a stronger influence. Studies also explore the basis of these ethical judgments, and find that the primary factor shaping them is the procedural justice that employees experience in their workplace. These results suggest that the roots of employee policy adherence and rule following behavior lie in the procedural justice of the organization. Overall, this analysis highlights the important role ethical judgments play in motivating both rule following and policy adherence among employees in work settings and provides practical suggestions for shaping those judgments.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aalders, M. and Wilthagen, T. (1997).Moving beyond command and control: Reflexivity in the regulation of occupational safety and health and the environment. Law and Policy¡u¿,¡/u¿ 19,415–443.
Adams, J.S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In, L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,2, 267–299. N.Y.: Academic Press.
Bell, M.P., McLaughlin, M.E., and Sequeira, J.M. (2002). Discrimination, harassment, and the glass ceiling: Women executives as change agents. Journal of Business Ethics, 37, 65–76.
Bewley, T. (1999). Why wages don’t fall during a recession. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard. 1999.
Blader, S. and Tyler, T.R., (2003a). The four component model of procedural justice. Human Resource Management Review, 13, 107–126.
Blader, S. and Tyler, T.R. (2003b). Testing the four component model of procedural justice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 747–758.
Blair, M. and Stout, L. (2001). Trust, trustworthiness, and the behavioral foundations of corporate law. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 149, 1735–1810.
Bowie, N.E. (1999). Business ethics: A Kantian perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Breyer, S.G. and Stewart, R.B. (1985). Administrative law and regulatory policy (2nd ed.). Boston: Little.
Carlsmith, K.M., Darley, J.M., and Robinson, P.H. (2000). Why do we punish? Deterrence and just deserts as motives for punishment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 284–299.
Chatman, J.A. (1989). Improving interactional organizational research: A model of personorganization fit. Academy of Management Review, 14, 333–349.
Chatman, J.A. (1991). Matching people and organizations: Selection and socialization in public accounting firms. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 459–484.
Coglianese, C. (1997). Assessing consensus: The promise and performance of negotiated rulemaking. Duke Law Journal, 46, 1255–1349.
Colquitt, J.A., Conlon, D.E., Wesson, M.J., Porter, C.O. and Yee Ng, K. (2001). Justice at the millennium. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 425–445.
Cropanzano, R., Byrne, Z.S., Bobocel, D.R. and Rupp, D.E. (2001). Moral virtues, fairness heuristics,social entities, and other denizens of organizational justice. Journal of vocational psychology, 58, 164–209.
Darley, J.M., Tyler, T.R., and Bilz, K. (2003). Enacting justice: The interplay of individual and institutional perspectives. In M.A.Hogg and J. Cooper (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Social Psychology. London: Sage.
Dorf, M.C. and Sabel, C.F. (1998). A constitution of democratic experimentalism. Columbia Law Review, 98, 267–371.
Estreicher, S. (2002). Human behavior and the economic paradigm at work. New York University Law Review, 77, 1–5.
Frederick, William C. (1995). Values, nature, and culture in the American Corporation. NewYork: Oxford University Press.
Frey, B.S. (1997). Not just for the money. Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar.
Gottfredson, D.C., Kearley, B.W., Najaka, S.S., and Rocha, C.M. (2007). How drug treatment courts work: An analysis of mediators. Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency, 44, 3–35.
Greenberg, J. (1997). The STEAL motive: Managing the social determinants of employee theft.In R. Giacalone and J. Greenberg (Eds), Antisocial behavior in organizations. Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.
Greenberg, J. and Cropanzano, R. (2001). (Eds.), Advances in organizational justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Gunningham, N. and Grabosky, P. (1998). Smart regulation: Designing environmental policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gunningham, N. and Rees, J. (1997). Industry self-regulation. Law and Policy, 19, 363–414.
Healy, M. and Iles, J. (2002). The establishment and enforcement of codes. Journal of Business Ethics, 39, 117–124.
Human, S.E. and Provan, K.G. (2000). Legitimacy building in the evolution of small firm multilateral networks: A comparative study of success and demise. Administrative Science Quarterly, 45, 327–365.
Huselid, M.A. (1995). The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 635–672.
Jenkins, G.D., Mitra, A. Gupta, N., and Shaw, J.D. (1998). Are financial incentives related to performance? Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 777–787.
Jolls, C. (2002). Fairness, minimul wage law, and employee benefits. New York University Law Review, 77, 47–70.
Kahneman, D., Knetsch J. and Thaler, R. (1986). Fairness and the assumptions of economics. Journal of Business, 59, 5285–5300.
Karkkainen, B.C. (2002). Collaborative ecosystem governance. Virginia Environmental Law Journal, 21, 190–243.
Katyal, N. (1997). Deterrence’s difficulty. Michigan Law Review, 95, 2385–2476.
Kelman, H.C. (1958). Compliance, identification, and internalization. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2, 51–60.
Kelman, H.C. and Hamilton, V.L. (1989). Crimes of obedience. New Haven: Yale.
Kim,W.C. and Mauborgne, R.A. (1993). Procedural justice, attitudes, and subsidiary top management compliance with multinationals’ corporate strategic decisions. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 502–526.
King, A. and Lenox, M. (2000). Industry self-regulation without sanctions. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 698–716.
Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by Rewards. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Kuperan, K. and Sutinen, J.G. (1998). Blue water crime: Deterrence, legitimacy, and compliance in fisheries. Law and Society Review, 32, 309–337.
Langevoort, D.C. (2002). Monitoring: The behavioral economics of corporate compliance with law. Columbia Business Law Review, 2002, 71–118.
Kerr, N.L. (1995). Norms in social dilemmas. In D. Schroeder (Ed.), Social dilemmas(pp. 31–48). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Kerr, N.L. and Kaufman-Gilliland, C.M. (1994). Communication, commitment, and cooperation in social dilemmas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 513–529.
Kerr, N.L., Garst, J., Lewandowski, D.A., and Harris, S.E. (1997). That still, small voice: Commitment to cooperate as an internalized versus a social norm. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1300–1311.
Laufer, W.S. and Robertson, D.C. (1997). Corporate ethics initiatives as social control. Journal of Business Ethics, 16, 1029–1048.
Lin, A.C. (1996). Participants’ experiences with habitat conservation plans and suggestions for streamlining the process. Ecology Law Quarterly, 23, 369–437.
Lind, E.A. and Tyler, T.R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum.
MacCoun, R.J. (1993). Drugs and the law: A psychological analysis of drug prohibition. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 497–512.
Margolis, J.D. and Walsh, J.P. (2001). People and profits?: The search for a link between a company’s social and financial performance. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Markell, D.L. (2000). The role of deterrence-based enforcement in a “reinvented” state/Federal relationship. Harvard Environmental Law Review, 24, 1–114.
Mintz, J. (2001). Scrutinizing environmental enforcement. Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law, 17, 127–148.
Nagin, D. (1998). Criminal deterrence at the outset of the twenty-first century. In M. Tonry (Ed.), Crime and justice: A review of research(vol. 23, pp. 1–42). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Nagin, D. and Paternoster, R. (1991). The preventive effects of the perceived risk of arrest. Criminology, 29, 561–585.
O’Reilly, C.A., Chatman, J.A. (1986). Organizational commitment and psychological attachment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71, 492–499.
Paternoster, R. (1987). The deterrent effect of the perceived certainty and severity of punishment. Justice Quarterly, 4, 173–217.
Paternoster, R. (1989). Decisions to participate in and desist from four types of common delinquency. Law and Society Review, 23, 7–40.
Paternoster, R., and Simpson, S. (1996). Sanction threats and appeals to morality: Testing a rational choice model of corporate crime. Law and Society Review, 30, 549–584.
Pearce, J.L. (2001). Organization and management in the embrace of government. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Rabin,M. (1993). Incorporating fairness into game theory and economics, 83, American Economic Review, 1281–1302.
Rechtschaffen, C. (1998). Deterrence vs. cooperation and the evolving theory of environmental enforcement. Southern California Law Review, 71, 1181–1272.
Rees, A. (1993). The role of fairness in wage determination. Journal of Labor Economics, 11, 243–253.
Rice, E.M. (1992). The corporate tax gap: Evidence on tax compliance by small corporations. In J. Slemrod (Ed.), Why people pay taxes. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Robinson, P.H. and Darley, J.M. (1995). Justice, liability, and blame. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Robinson, P.H. and Darley, J.M. (1997). The utility of desert. Northwestern University Law Review, 91, 453–499.
Schminke, M. (1998). Managerial ethics: Moral management of people and processes. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Selznick, P. (1969). Law, society, and industrial justice. New York: Russell-Sage Foundation.
Simon, D.R. and Eitzen, D.S. (1990). Elite deviance (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Simpson, S.S. (2002). Corporate crime, law, and social control. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
Smith, N.C., Simpson, S.S., and Huang, C.Y. (2007). Why managers fail to do the right thing: An empirical study of unethical and illegal conduct. Business Ethics Quarterly. 17, 633–667.
Spence, D.B. (2001). The shadow of the rational polluter: Rethinking the role of rational actor models in environmental law. California Law Review, 89, 917–998.
Stewart, R.B. (February 10, 2003). Administrative law in the 21st century. Presentation at the New York University Law School.
Suchman, M. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20, 571–610.
Sutinen, Jon G. and Kuperan, K. (1999). A socio-economic theory of regulatory compliance. International Journal of Social Economics, 26, 174–193.
Trevino, L.K. andWeaver, G.R. (2003). Managing ethics in business organizations. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Tyler, T.R., (1999). Why people cooperate with organizations: An identity-based perspective. Research in Organizational Behavior, 21, 201–246.
Tyler, T.R. (2001). Trust and law-abidingness: A proactive model of social regulation. Boston University Law Review, 81, 361–406.
Tyler, T.R. (2003). Procedural justice, legitimacy, and the effective rule of law. In M. Tonry (Ed.), Crime and justice—A review of research(vol. 30, pp. 431–505). Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.
Tyler, T.R. (2005). Promoting employee policy adherence and rule following in work settings: The value of self-regulatory approaches. Brooklyn Law Review, 70, 1287–1312.
Tyler, T.R. (2006a). Why people obey the law: Procedural justice, legitimacy, and compliance Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tyler, T.R. (2006b). Legitimacy and legitimation. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 375–400.
Tyler, T.R (2006c). Restorative justice and procedural justice.Journal of Social Issues, 62, 305–323.
Tyler, T.R. (2007). Psychology and the design of legal institutions. Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Wolf Legal Publishers.
Tyler, T.R. and Blader, S.L. (2000). Cooperation in groups: Procedural justice, social identity, and behavioral engagement. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
Tyler, T.R. and Blader, S.L. (2003). The group engagement model: Procedural justice, social identity, and cooperative behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 349–361.
Tyler, T.R. and Blader, S.L. (2005). Can businesses effectively regulate employee conduct? The antecedents of rule following in work settings. Academy of Management Journal, 48, 1143–1158.
Tyler, T.R., Boeckmann, R.J., Smith, H.J., and Huo, Y.J. (1997). Social justice in a diverse society. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Tyler, T.R., Callahan, P., and Frost, J. (2007a). Armed, and dangerous(?): Can self-regulatory approaches shape rule adherence among agents of social control. Law and Society Review, 41, 457–492.
Tyler, T.R. and Huo, Y.J. (2002). Trust in the law. New York: Russell-Sage Foundation.
Tyler, T.R. and Lind, E.A. (1992). A relational model of authority in groups. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 115–191).
Tyler, T.R., Sherman, L., Strong, H., Barnes, G., and Woods, D. (2007). Reintegrative shaming, procedural justice, and recidivism: The engagement of offenders’ psychological mechanisms in the Canberra RISE drinking and driving experiment. Law and Society Review, 41, 553–586.
Vandenbergh, M.P. (2003). Beyond elegance: A test of social norms in corporate environmental compliance. Stanford Environmental Law Journal, 22, 55–143.
Vardi, Y. and Weitz, E. (2004). Misbehavior in organizations. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Walster, E., Walster G.W., and Berscheid, E. (1978). Equity: Theory and research. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Zimmerman, M.A. and Zeitz, G.J. (2002). Beyond survival: Achieving new venture growth by building legitimacy. Academy of Management Review, 27, 414–443.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tyler, T.R. (2009). Self-Regulatory Approaches to White-Collar Crime: The Importance of Legitimacy and Procedural Justice. In: Simpson, S.S., Weisburd, D. (eds) The Criminology of White-Collar Crime. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09502-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09502-8_10
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-09501-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-09502-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)