Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance
- The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction: Compliance as the Interaction between Rules and Behavior
- Part I Compliance Concepts and Approaches
- 2 Compliance as Costs and Benefits
- 3 The Professionalization of Compliance
- 4 From Responsive Regulation to Ecological Compliance: Meta-regulation and the Existential Challenge of Corporate Compliance
- 5 Behavioral Ethics as Compliance
- 6 Constructing the Content and Meaning of Law and Compliance
- 7 Compliance as Operations Management
- 8 Compliance and Contestation
- 9 Compliance as Management
- 10 Compliance as Liability Risk Management
- 11 Criminalized Compliance
- 12 Supply Chain Compliance
- 13 Regulatory Compliance in a Global Perspective: Developing Countries, Emerging Markets and the Role of International Development Institutions
- Part II Deterrence and Incapacitation
- Part III Incentives
- Part IV Legitimacy and Social Norms
- Part V Capacity and Opportunity
- Part VI Compliance and Cognition
- Part VII Management and Organizational Processes
- Part VIII Measuring and Evaluating Compliance
- Part IX Analysis of Particular Fields
- References
6 - Constructing the Content and Meaning of Law and Compliance
from Part I - Compliance Concepts and Approaches
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2021
- The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance
- The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction: Compliance as the Interaction between Rules and Behavior
- Part I Compliance Concepts and Approaches
- 2 Compliance as Costs and Benefits
- 3 The Professionalization of Compliance
- 4 From Responsive Regulation to Ecological Compliance: Meta-regulation and the Existential Challenge of Corporate Compliance
- 5 Behavioral Ethics as Compliance
- 6 Constructing the Content and Meaning of Law and Compliance
- 7 Compliance as Operations Management
- 8 Compliance and Contestation
- 9 Compliance as Management
- 10 Compliance as Liability Risk Management
- 11 Criminalized Compliance
- 12 Supply Chain Compliance
- 13 Regulatory Compliance in a Global Perspective: Developing Countries, Emerging Markets and the Role of International Development Institutions
- Part II Deterrence and Incapacitation
- Part III Incentives
- Part IV Legitimacy and Social Norms
- Part V Capacity and Opportunity
- Part VI Compliance and Cognition
- Part VII Management and Organizational Processes
- Part VIII Measuring and Evaluating Compliance
- Part IX Analysis of Particular Fields
- References
Summary
Abstract: This chapter argues that organizational compliance is best illustrated not by a compliance versus noncompliance dichotomy but by a processual model in which organizations construct the meaning of both compliance and law. I argue that organizations must be understood as social actors that are influenced by widely institutionalized beliefs about legality, morality, politics, and rationality. I review the empirical research in this vein and show how institutionalized conceptions of law and compliance first become widely accepted within the business community and eventually come to be seen as rational and legitimate by public legal actors and institutions and thus influence the very meaning of law. Through two distinct waves of research, I offer a theoretical framework for understanding compliance as a process and by specifying the institutional and political mechanisms through which organizations shape the content and meaning of law. First wave studies laid out the initial framework for how to understand organizations as constructers of legal meaning while second wave studies refined and extended the theory in multiple ways. I suggest that the increasing complexity and ambiguity of legal rules provides legal intermediaries greater opportunities to influence what compliance means by filtering what law means through nonlegal logics. I conclude by discussing the implications of organizational construction of law and compliance for studies of law, business, and the state and suggest directions for a third wave of research.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Compliance , pp. 63 - 80Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021