Corporate Deviance

Categories of Corporate Deviance

There are many ways to examine the issue of corporate deviance. One important aspect is who/what are the main victims of the activities. Are the victims employees (e.g., unsafe working conditions or unfair pay), consumers (e.g., sale of unsafe products or overcharging for products), the general public (e.g., polluting the air and water), or competing corporations (e.g., regulatory loopholes)? Another important aspect of corporate deviance is the type of deviant activity carried out. Are the activities a form of violence (e.g., deadly medication side effects), corruption (e.g., payoffs to government officials to ignore illegal behavior), stealing (e.g., tax evasion), or deception (e.g., lying about the health benefits of a product)?

A third aspect of examining corporate deviance is to determine the size of the company involved. Is the company local, employing fewer than 25 employees? Is it a national company, with millions of dollars in profits and thousands of employees? Or is it a transnational company, with sales in the billions of dollars and operations scattered through countries around the globe? Fourth, corporate deviance can also be classified in terms of the type of product or service provided by the corporation, such as automobile manufacture, petroleum drilling and refinery, pharmaceuticals, health care provision, education provision, and banking services.

A fifth way of thinking about corporate deviance is in terms of the primary actor involved in committing deviant acts, such as the chief executive officers and various vice presidents of an organization, middle-level managers and supervisors, or lower-level employees carrying out commands from the top level of the organization. Sixth, corporate deviance can also be examined in terms of whether the actions taken by those involved violate the law (are considered criminal actions, e.g., defense contractors bilking the government) or violate society's sense of ethics and fairness (e.g., billionaires financing presidential candidate campaigns).

Following the typology used by David Friedrichs (2007) in Trusted Criminals, further discussion of corporate deviance will be centered on the types of activities in which corporate agents engage and who/what are the major victims. Hence, the categories used in this discussion are (a) corporate violence [Page 143]against the public; (b) corporate violence against consumers; (c) corporate violence against employees; (d) corporate misuse of power, fraud and exploitation of the public; (e) corporate misuse of power, fraud and exploitation of consumers; (f) corporate misuse of power, fraud and exploitation of employees; and (g) corporate activities against other businesses (e.g., franchisees, competitors, and creditors).

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