Abstract
While neglect, exploitation, denial of human rights and abuse of nursing home residents can be found in both non-profit and for-profit nursing homes, substantially higher non-compliance with the law is found among for-profits. A significant source of non-compliance is pressure on senior management from proprietors to reach financial goals that can only be attained by cutting corners on quality of care. This source of non-compliance is stronger among for-profits than nonprofits in a sample of 410 Australian nursing homes. These data therefore supply more systematic support for what, has been a communplace observation in the corporate crime literature: that pressure for lawbreaking comes from the top down and from profits.
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Notes and references
John Braithwaite,Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical Industry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 351.
R.C. Baumart, “How Ethical are Businessmen?” in Gilbert Geis (ed.)White-Collar Criminal (New York: Atherton, 1968).
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John Braithwaite,To Punish or Persuade: Enforcement of Coal Mine Safety, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).
See, for example, Harold C. Barnett, “Corporate Capitalism, Corporate Crime,”Crime and Delinquency, 1981 (27), 4–23.
See, for example, P.N. Grabosky,Wayward Governance: Illegality and its Control in the Public Sector (Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, 1989); Ronald C. Kramer, “The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion: A Case Study of State-Corporate Crime,” in Kip Schlegel and David Weisburd (eds.),White-Collar Crime Reconsidered (Boston: Northeaster University Press, 1992); John Braithwaite, “White-Collar Crime, Competition and Capitalism: Comment on Coleman”,American Journal of Sociology, 1988 (94), 627–631 and see the rejoinder, James William Coleman, “Competition and the Structure of Industrial Society: Reply to Braithwaite”,American Journal of Sociology 1988 (94), 632–636.
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James William Coleman, “The Theory of White-Collar Crime: From Sutherland to the 1990s” in Kip Schlegel and David Weisburd (eds.)White-Collar Crime Reconsidered (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), p. 71.
For complete details on the sampling and other methodological issues, see John Braithwaite, Toni Makkai, Valerie Braithwaite and Diane Gibson,Raising the Standard: Resident Centred Nursing Home Regulation in Australia. (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1993).
John Braithwaite, Valerie Braithwaite, Diane Gibson, Miriam Landau and Toni Makkai,The Reliability and Validity of Nursing Home Standards (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1992).
Valerie Braithwaite, John Braithwaite, Diane Gibson and Toni Makkai, “Assessing the Quality of Australian Nursing Home Care”,Australian Journal of Public Health, 1992 (16), 89–97.
For example, S.R. Greenwald and M.W. Linn, “Intercorrelation of data on nursing homes,”The Gerontologist, 1971 (11), 337–346.
Myron D. Fottler, Howard L. Smith and William L. James, “Profits and patient care quality in nursing homes: Are they compatible?”The Gerontologist, 1981 (21), 532–538.
See Vernon L. Green and Deborah J. Monahan, “Structural and operational factors affecting quality of patient care in nursing homes,”Public Policy, 1981 (29:4) 399–415.
See John Braithwaite, Toni Makkai, Valerie Braithwaite, Diane Gibson and David Ermann,The Contribution of the Standards Monitoring Process to the Quality of Nursing Home Life: A Preliminary Report. (Canberra: Department of Health, Housing and Community Services, 1990).
Toni Makkai and Valerie Braithwaite, “Professionalism, Organizations and Compliance,”Law and Social Inquiry, 1993.
See, John braithwaite, Valerie Braithwaite, Diane Gibson, Miriam Landau and Toni Makkai,The Reliability and Validity of Nursing Home Standards. (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1992).
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Bruce Vladeck,Unloving Care: The Nursing Home Tragedy (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 123.
One of Australia's most outstanding directors of nursing, who has worked in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors made this point in a somewhat different way: “Some of the church homes are too much into the caring role. They're not enough into independence. They encourage the sick role, dependency.”
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Jenkins, A., Braithwaite, J. Profits, pressure and corporate lawbreaking. Crime Law Soc Change 20, 221–232 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01308451
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01308451