Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

This 1966 paperback edition of a publication which first appeared in 1963 has by now been widely reviewed as a worthy contribution to the sociological study of deviant behavior. Its current appearance as a paperback is a testimonial both to the quality of the work and to the prominence of deviant behavior in this generation. In general the author places deviance in perspective, identifies types of deviant behavior, considers the role of rule makers and enforcers, and some of the problems in studying deviance. In addition, he develops a sequential model of deviance relying on the concept of career, a concept originally developed in studies of occupations. In his study of a particular kind of deviance, the use of marihuana, the author posits and tests systematically an hypothesis about the genesis of marihuana use for pleasure. The hypothesis traces the sequence of changes in individual attitude

Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance.

Although it is the illegitimacy and social harmfulness of crime that we are usually concerned with,crime is actually retaliation to previous violation in a broader historical context.Results of many sociological studies show that criminals,according to criminal law,are victims in many cases,whether in the past or at present time.Criminal behavior is self-help to previous complaint and response to deviant behavior,therefore it becomes a kind of social control.Crime could be forecasted and interpreted by analyzing this kind of self-help according to a given theory.

Crime as Social Control

Law and Social Norms

http://academic.oup.com/ajhp/article-pdf/41/10/2249/28409295/ajhp2249.pdf

Corporate Crime in the Pharmaceutical industry

Firms enter cartels (e.g. price-fixing; bid-rigging) in order to control market uncertainties and gain collusive profits, but face challenges in controlling the cartel itself. A challenge for business cartels is how to organise collective illegal activities without the use of formal control, such as binding legal contracts or arbitration. While one might expect that a lack of formal legal control leads to mutual conflicts and opportunistic behaviour resulting in short-lived cartels, firms often manage to continue their illegal conduct for years. This raises questions as to how firms organise their cartels in the absence of legal means. This article addresses how informal coordinating mechanisms enable cartel stability outside the scope of formal legal control. Based on an in depth study of 14 Dutch cartels, this article shows the importance of informal social mechanisms to coordinate, monitor, enforce, and compensate for the longevity of business cartels. Furthermore, the results emphasise that in order to explain cartel stability, social mechanisms that induce trust need to be considered.

/pdf/managing-cartels-how-cartel-participants-create-stability-in-1cphm03y87.pdf

Managing Cartels: how Cartel Participants Create Stability in the Absence of law

markdownCriminological study of the social organisation of business cartels. How are business cartels embedded in existing professional networks, both relational and structurally. 
How do cartelists succees to sustain their illegal cartel agreements despite the increased efforts by governments and regulators to detect and punish them.

/pdf/cooperation-against-the-law-criminological-study-of-the-4b8ft8r0px.pdf

Cooperation Against the Law: Criminological study of the social organisation of business cartels

Leniency offers corporations the possibility to come clean about their involvement in cartel conduct (for example, price-fixing, bid-rigging) in exchange for immunity or reduction of financial pena...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1477370819874432

Leniency in exchange for cartel confessions

In this article, two case studies of large-scale bid rigging in the construction industry in Canada and the Netherlands are analysed to explore why business cartels sometimes do and sometimes do not involve organised crime. By combining concepts from both organised crime and organisational crime, an integrated understanding of the organisation of serious crimes for gain is applied. Across time and space, businesses in the construction industry are known to fix prices, use collusive tendering and divide market shares in illegal cartel agreements. In order to stabilise cartels, participants need to ward off new competitors and prevent cheating within the cartel. The question why we see a system of collusion involving organised crime and violence in Canada as opposed to the Netherlands is answered through analysing two comparable cases. This article finds two systems of bid rigging emerge under different cultural conditions: inclusive and exclusive collusion. The exclusive system makes use of the violent reputation provided by criminal groups and distinguishes from the inclusive system that uses sophisticated administration of mutual claims in shadow bookkeeping.

/pdf/business-cartels-and-organised-crime-exclusive-and-inclusive-14949hify5.pdf

Business cartels and organised crime: exclusive and inclusive systems of collusion

This article examines how corporate crime is organised through studying the longevity of illegal business cartels. Previous studies demonstrate cartels can remain undetected for years or decades. Similar to criminal networks, cartel participants need to communicate in order to collaborate effectively, but operate covertly at the same time. The case study analysis of fourteen Dutch cartel cases in this study demonstrates two main findings. First, cartel participants communicate frequently and elaborately, and the need for trust and communication impedes concealment. Second, the longevity of cartels cannot be explained by isolation from but by embeddedness in their social environment. The context of legitimacy and a facilitating environment are significant factors. Criminal collaboration is studied extensively in literature on organised crime, however gained little attention in the literature on corporate crime. Hereby, this study contributes to an understanding of how corporate criminal conduct is organised, by applying relevant theory on criminal networks gleaned from the literature on organised crime.

/pdf/strong-by-concealment-how-secrecy-trust-and-social-3qt9r4ubky.pdf

Jelle Jaspers

Papers

Managing Cartels: how Cartel Participants Create Stability in the Absence of law

Cooperation Against the Law: Criminological study of the social organisation of business cartels

Leniency in exchange for cartel confessions

Business cartels and organised crime: exclusive and inclusive systems of collusion

Strong by concealment? How secrecy, trust, and social embeddedness facilitate corporate crime