In keeping with traditional sociological concerns about order and disorder, this essay addresses the dark side of organizations. To build a theoretical basis for the dark side as an integrated field of study, I review four literatures in order to make core ideas of each available to specialists in the others. Using a Simmelian-based case comparison method of analogical theorizing, I first consider sociological constructs that identify both the generic social form and the generic origin of routine nonconformity: how things go wrong in socially organized settings. Then I examine three types of routine nonconformity with adverse outcomes that harm the public: mistake, misconduct, and disaster produced in and by organizations. Searching for analogies and differences, I find that in common, routine nonconformity, mistake, misconduct, and disaster are systematically produced by the interconnection between environment, organizations, cognition, and choice. These patterns amplify what is known about social structure and have implications for theory, research, and policy.

No abstract

No abstract

The legal and administrative apparatus responsible for the social control of organizations relies extensively on the deterrent effects of punishment. This strategy presumes a rational choice model of organizational misconduct that de-contextualizes decision making, emphasizing consequences while ignoring how preferences are formed. I raise three challenges to the rational choice/deterrence model of social control: 1) research and theory on decision making, 2) a sociological paradigm that situates individual action in a structure/culture/agency nexus that influences interpretation, meaning, and action at the local level, and 3) an analysis of the Challenger launch decision at NASA as situated action, showing how structure, culture, and history shaped preferences and choice. These challenges suggest a need to reorient regulatory activity toward the social context of decision making. I conclude with a research agenda to explore the relationship between situated action, preference formation, rational choice, and decisions to violate in organizational misconduct.Management decisions in the business world that value competitive and economic success more highly than the well-being of workers, consumers, or the general public so often have come to public attention that today's most widely accepted model of corporate criminality portrays managers of profit-seeking organizations as "amoral calculators" whose illegal actions are motivated by rational calculation of costs and opportunities (Kagan and Scholz, 1984). Driven by pressures from the competitive environment, managers will violate the law to attain desired organizational goals unless the anticipated legal penalties (the expected costs weighed against the probability of delaying or avoiding them) exceed additional benefits the firm could gain by violation.The amoral calculator model locates the cause of business misconduct in the calculations of individual decision makers. It reflects the logic of sociological rational choice theory (Hechter, 1987;Friedman and Hechter, 1988; J.S. Coleman, 1990; Hechter and Kanazawa 1997), but with one important distinction. When decision makers' calculations of costs and benefits are tainted by self-interest, economics, or politics so that intentional

No abstract