The “Criminology of the Corporation” and Regulatory Enforcement Strategies

Types of responsiveness

“…Valerie Braithwaite tested Kagan and Scholz's (1984) classic typology of regulated actors as political citizens, amoral calculators and incompetent. This was not the structure of reaction to regulatory authorities revealed in Braithwaite's (2009) The other important micro-foundation, developed in work on healthcare regulation by RegNet's Judith Healy (2011), has been on the need to complement a pyramid of sanctions with a pyramid of supports.…”

The regulatory state and beyond

“…While it is traditional to view regulatory enforcement as a bilateral process in which enforcement is imposed on regulatees by regulators, the responsive approach recognises that the characteristics and posture of the regulatee are also relevant to how enforcement actions will be received and acted on. Kagan and Scholz (1984), for example, have distinguished the political citizens (who are fundamentally committed to being compliant with their legal obligations), the amoral calculators (who comply only where this aligns with their financial interests) and the organisationally incompetent (who lack the capacity to comply even if they wish to). The pyramidal approach responds with the insight that the first group will generally comply with education and advice, the second will require credible threats of escalation to comply and the third group should be removed from the market with licence revocation or equivalent.…”

Enforcing Consumer Protection Laws

“…For these purposes business can be divided in a three way categorization into those which fundamentally seek to be compliant with the law as one of their operating values, amoral calculators which operate on a cost-benefit basis to achieve organisational goals of profit and growth, who will comply where it makes sense from a cost-benefit perspective, and incompetents who, whatever their intent, lack the capacity to act in a manner which complies with regulatory requirements. 60 With the compliant organizations, it is suggested low level approaches based on education and advice are likely, in most cases, to be sufficient to promote modification to behaviour in breach of legislation. With the incompetents such approaches are not likely to be effective.…”