Book Review: Corporate Wrongdoing and the Art of the Accusation

Robert R. Faulkner: Corporate Wrongdoing and the Art of the Accusation. New York: Anthem Press, 2011. 192 pp. £19.99 / $32.95, paper.

Read the review by Donald Palmer of UC Davis, published in Administrative Science Quarterly:

Inquiry in contemporary organizational theory into the causes of wrongdoing in and by organizations can be neatly packaged in a very small box. It exclusively focuses on the factors that can lead organizational participants and organizations to engage in wrongdoing, concentrating on factors related to rational choice, cultural prescriptions, and performance strain. Further, it analyzes a narrow range of types of wrongdoing: types that result in administrative sanctions, civil judgments, and criminal convictions. Organizational scholars for the most part completely ignore the labeling process by which organizational behaviors are designated wrongful and organizational actors are classified as wrongdoers. This labeling process is an important cause of wrongdoing. Simply put, there can be no wrongdoing unless someone or some organization draws a line separating right from wrong.

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