William S. Laufer

Corporate Ethics Initiatives As Social Control

Efforts to institutionalize ethics in corporations have been discussed without first addressing the desirability of norm conformity or the possibility that the means used to elicit conformity will be coercive. This article presents a theoretical context, grounded in models of social control, within which ethics initiatives may be evaluated. Ethics initiatives are discussed in relation to variables that already exert control in the workplace, such as environmental controls, organizational controls, and personal controls.

Handbook of psychology and law

Picture of crime urban planning and crime prevention crime specific studies enhancing effectiveness of criminal investigation surveillance and security research and policy.

Is it Wrong to Criminalize and Punish Psychopaths

Increasing evidence from psychology and neuroscience suggests that emotion plays an important and sometimes critical role in moral judgment and moral behavior. At the same time, there is increasing psychological and neuroscientific evidence that brain regions critical in emotional and moral capacity are impaired in psychopaths. We ask how the criminal law should accommodate these two streams of research, in light of a new normative and legal account of the criminal responsibility of psychopaths.

Illusions of compliance and governance

Purpose – This article aims to place recent corporate governance reforms in the historical context of the good corporate citizenship movement that began in the US in the mid‐1990s and came to an abrupt end in 2002 when the most recent spate of corporate scandals emerged. It explores what the apparent failure of this movement portends for the recently‐enacted governance reforms.Design/methodology/approach – The paper engages in a policy analysis of regulatory reform.Findings – After offering the tale of corporate governance, a critical take on current reforms, the paper finds the skeptics and pessimists account of corporate good citizenship movement to be most helpful in explaining the illusory nature of corporate reforms and the resilience of the regulatory status quo.Originality/value – The paper is a critical analysis of corporate governance reforms.

Increased executive functioning, attention, and cortical thickness in white-collar criminals

Very little is known on white‐collar crime and how it differs to other forms of offending. This study tests the hypothesis that white‐collar criminals have better executive functioning, enhanced information processing, and structural brain superiorities compared with offender controls. Using a case‐control design, executive functioning, orienting, and cortical thickness was assessed in 21 white‐collar criminals matched with 21 controls on age, gender, ethnicity, and general level of criminal offending. White‐collar criminals had significantly better executive functioning, increased electrodermal orienting, increased arousal, and increased cortical gray matter thickness in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, somatosensory cortex, and the temporal‐parietal junction compared with controls. Results, while initial, constitute the first findings on neurobiological characteristics of white‐collar criminals. It is hypothesized that white‐collar criminals have information‐processing and brain superiorities that give them an advantage in perpetrating criminal offenses in occupational settings. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012.

Business and poverty 10 (2) : opening markets to the poor

This report begins with a guest editorial; by Djordjija B. Petkoski; V. Kasturi, Rangan; and William S. Laufer. The next 4 billion: characterizing Base of the economic pyramid (BoP) markets; by Allen, L. Hammond; William, J. Kramer; Robert S. Katz; Julia, T. Tran; and Courtland, Walker. Creating shared value through basic business strategy; by Niels, Christiansen. The shakti revolution; by Gavin, Neath; and Vijay, Sharma. Social issue-oriented BoP business and Japanese companies; by Mari Kogiso; Mia, Matsuo; and Tokutaro, Hiramoto. Lighting Africa; by Katia, Theriault; Lindsay, Madeira; and Patrick, Avato. Developing the local supply chain for the contract of the century; by Ibrahim Ismayilov, Samir, Taghiyev; Olga, Godunova; and Farzin, Mirmotahari. Patrimonio Hoy; by Israel, Moreno Barcelo. ZMQ enabling bottom-up development; by Subhi, Quraishi. products. Business and malnutrition; by Marc, Van Ameringen; Benrangere, Magarinos; Michael, Jarvis. Bridging gaps in reproductive health care in Egypt through private sector involvement; by Andy, Cole; Mohamed, Afifi; and Reem, Salah. Improving health improves economic well-being; by Christy, L. Wistar. Access to finance and markets as a strategy to address poverty; by Nachiket Mor; and Bindu, Ananth. Bringing Bangladesh into the digital age; by Defta partners group; the Alliance forum foundation; and George, Hara.

Corporate Culpability and the Limits of Law

A6stract: Ethicists and legal theorists have proposed models of corporate culpability that shift the standard of guilt determination from vicarious attribution of individual action and intention to an assessment of culture, policies, as well as organizational action and inaction. This paper briefly reviews four prominent models of corporate culpability, arguing that each makes claims that extend well beyond the limits of existing law. As an alternative to these models, a constructive corpo rate fault is described that relies on both objective and subjective reasonableness judgments. The paper concludes with a consideration of constructive corporate fault in relation to an Accountability model of corporate liability.

Hindsight Bias and Third-Party Consentors to Warrantless Police Searches*

Research on hindsight bias indicates that awareness of event outcome influences how individuals interpret information and form judgments. We extend this earlier work to suggest that the effect of this bias on lay perceptions of third-party consent to warrantless searchers of residences may be contingent upon the presence verus absence of the search target(the suspect). A study using random assignment to experimental conditions in a between-subjects design explored this possibility. The experiment indicated that hindsight bias in perceived rights of the third-party consentor is influenced, not only by search outcome, but also by a web of overlapping and potentially competing social obligations and personal prerogatives, the salience of which is influenced by situational dynamics.

Author Reply: Vitacco, Erickson, and Lishner: Holding Psychopaths Morally and Criminally Culpable

Psychopathy is characterized by pronounced emotional deficits, yet individuals with psychopathic traits generally understand the law and the likely punishments for violating it. Vitacco, Erickson, and Lishner (2013) suggest that because of this appreciation, there is no question that psychopaths are criminally responsible. We make the modest argument that increasing psychological and neurological evidence calls into question whether conventional assumptions about an offender’s culpable states of mind hold true for psychopaths. It is likely, we suggest, that a wide range of deficits found in psychopaths impair their ability to calculate risks of harm and utilize information about the consequences of their behavior.

Where Is the Moral Indignation Over Corporate Crime

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.