Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Accusations: Between the Innuendo and the Illegal
- Chapter 2 Red Flags: How to Assemble an Accusation
- Chapter 3 Fighting Words and Key Phrases
- Chapter 4 Market Exchanges Gone Sour: Six Fields of Action
- Chapter 5 Finger Pointing and Three Themes: Lying, Cheating, Stealing
- Chapter 6 The Ecology of Greed: Hot Spots for Accusations
- Chapter 7 The Repertoires of Wrongdoing
- Appendix A Notes on Statistical Analysis and Coding Principal Themes, Keywords, and Key Phrases in the Accusations
- Appendix B A Sample of United States Corporations and Counts of Public Announcements of Alleged Economic Crime – 1994 (fourth quarter) to 2006 (first quarter)
- Tables
- References
- Index
Chapter 7 - The Repertoires of Wrongdoing
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Accusations: Between the Innuendo and the Illegal
- Chapter 2 Red Flags: How to Assemble an Accusation
- Chapter 3 Fighting Words and Key Phrases
- Chapter 4 Market Exchanges Gone Sour: Six Fields of Action
- Chapter 5 Finger Pointing and Three Themes: Lying, Cheating, Stealing
- Chapter 6 The Ecology of Greed: Hot Spots for Accusations
- Chapter 7 The Repertoires of Wrongdoing
- Appendix A Notes on Statistical Analysis and Coding Principal Themes, Keywords, and Key Phrases in the Accusations
- Appendix B A Sample of United States Corporations and Counts of Public Announcements of Alleged Economic Crime – 1994 (fourth quarter) to 2006 (first quarter)
- Tables
- References
- Index
Summary
Life being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection, the latter, in search of the hard latent value with which alone it is concerned, sniffs round the mass as instinctively and unerringly as a dog suspicious of some buried bone.
– Henry JamesThe study of accusations is a process of sniffing and finding. There is “hard latent value” to be found in the art of the intermediate, between weak informal complaints and strong criminal charges and sanctions. Allegations in this intermediary or “goldilocks” position help reveal the moral order of the market in which violations of the code of business conduct evoke reactions that tend to publicly announce, and thereby reinforce, the norms.
Accusations pervade our news headlines and public affairs, but how should we evaluate these when they occur in economic transactions? All established markets operate with institutional rules governing the roles and responsibilities of market actors and the rules of exchange. Here we see that something has gone afoul in business and uncover the rules and understandings governing economic exchange by finding where and how people take umbrage and complain about the behavior of their exchange partners. Taking umbrage directs us to situations in which people complain that things are not as they should be, thereby revealing the rules of exchange, their interests, and their ideas about misrepresentation and misdirection.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Corporate Wrongdoing and the Art of the Accusation , pp. 123 - 142Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2011