To date, theory and research on corruption in organizations have primarily focused on its static antecedents. This article focuses on the spread and growth of corruption in organizations. For this purpose, three downward organizational spirals are formulated: the spiral of divergent norms, the spiral of pressure, and the spiral of opportunity. Social Identity Theory is used to explain the mechanisms of each of these spirals. Our dynamic perspective contributes to a greater understanding of the development of corruption in organizations and (...) opens up promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

In response to calls for more research on how to prevent or detect fraud (ACAP, Final Report of the Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession, United States Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC, 2008 ; AICPA, SAS No. 99: Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit, New York, NY, 2002 ; Carcello et al., Working Paper, University of Tennessee, Bentley University and Kennesaw State University, 2008 ; Wells, Journal of Accountancy, 2004 ), we develop a framework that identifies three (...) psychological pathways to fraud, supported by multiple theories relating to moral intuition and disengagement, rationalization, and the role played by negative affect. The purpose of developing the framework is twofold: (1) to draw attention to important yet under-researched aspects of ethical decision-making, and (2) to increase our understanding of the psychology of committing fraud. Our framework builds on the existing fraud triangle (PCAOB, Consideration of fraud in a financial statement audit. AU Section 316, www.pcaobus.org , 2005 ) which is used by auditors to assess fraud risk. The fraud triangle is composed of three factors that, together, predict the likelihood of fraud within an organization: opportunity, incentive/pressure, and attitude/rationalization. We find that, when faced with the opportunity and incentive/pressure, there are three psychological pathways to fraud nestled within attitude/rationalization: (1) lack of awareness, (2) intuition coupled with rationalization, and (3) reasoning. These distinctions are important for fraud prevention because each of these paths is driven by a different psychological mechanism. This framework is useful in a number of ways. First, it identifies certain insidious situational factors in which individuals commit fraud without recognizing it. Second, it extends our knowledge of rationalization by theorizing that individuals use rationalization to avoid or reduce the negative affect that accompanies performing an unethical behavior. Negative affect is important because individuals wish to avoid it. Third, it identifies several other methods fraudsters use to reduce negative affect, each of which could serve as potential “psychological red flags” and helps predict future fraudulent behavior. Finally, our framework can be used as a theoretical foundation to explore several interventions designed to prevent fraud. (shrink)

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

Dissenters from the dominant views about vaccination sometimes are subject to adverse actions, including abusive comment, threats, formal complaints, censorship, and deregistration, a phenomenon that can be called suppression of dissent. Three types of cases are examined: scientists and physicians; a high-profile researcher; and a citizen campaigner. Comparing the methods used in these different types of cases provides a preliminary framework for understanding the dynamics of suppression in terms of vulnerabilities.

The Executive Director of The St James Ethics Centre, GPO Box 3599, Sydney, Australia, seeks enlightenment from social thinkers Machiavelli, Robespierre and Rousseau to understand how corporate governance is, and might be, conducted today.

The Executive Director of The St James Ethics Centre, GPO Box 3599, Sydney, Australia, seeks enlightenment from social thinkers Machiavelli, Robespierre and Rousseau to understand how corporate governance is, and might be, conducted today.

Much attention has been focused in recent years on the ethical acceptability of physicians receiving gifts from drug companies. Professional guidelines recognize industry gifts as a conflict of interest and establish thresholds prohibiting the exchange of large gifts while expressly allowing for the exchange of small gifts such as pens, note pads, and coffee. Considerable evidence from the social sciences suggests that gifts of negligible value can influence the behavior of the recipient in ways the recipient does not always realize. (...) Policies and guidelines that rely on arbitrary value limits for gift-giving or receipt should be reevaluated. (shrink)

This article argues that the misalignment of private profit-maximizing objectives with public health needs causes institutional corruption in the pharmaceutical sector and systematically leads firms to act contrary to public heath. The article analyzes how financial incentives generate a business model promoting harmful practices and explores several means of realigning financial incentives in order to foster therapeutic innovation and promote the rational use of medicines.

The resurgence of infectious diseases and the emergence of infectious diseases raise questions on how to cope with the situation. The germ or clinical approach is the hegemonic biomedical paradigm. In this article, the author argues that the spread of infectious diseases has posted a challenge to the biomedical paradigm and shows how lock-in procedures maintain alternative and complementary medicine paradigms in the backyard.

To date, theory and research on corruption in organizations have primarily focused on its static antecedents. This article focuses on the spread and growth of corruption in organizations. For this purpose, three downward organizational spirals are formulated: the spiral of divergent norms, the spiral of pressure, and the spiral of opportunity. Social Identity Theory is used to explain the mechanisms of each of these spirals. Our dynamic perspective contributes to a greater understanding of the development of corruption in organizations and (...) opens up promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

In researching women’s involvement in economic crime, the concept of the ‘economic’ is problematic. Women’s crime for economic gain and women’s crime in economic terms are inadequately catered for. In reviewing criminologists’ uses of the notion of ‘economic crime’ I suggest that criminological understandingin relation to crime for economic gain is poor and that gender freedom/blindness/specificity variously operate. This article provides an original feminist reading of contemporary work on crime and markets and rational choicetheory and relates this to feminist economic (...) critiques in order to achieve agendering of the economy. The broad aims of the article are to illustratethe problematics of economic classifications and definitions in criminologyand to mount an argument that suggests the whole notion of the economic within criminology demands (feminist) critique. (shrink)

Following Foucault’s work on disciplinary power and biopolitics, this article maps an initial cartography of the research areas to be traced by a genealogy of pharmacological practice. Pharmacology, as a practical activity, refers to the creation, production and sale of drugs/medication. This work identifies five lines of research that, although often disconnected from each other, may be observed in the specialized literature: pharmaceuticalization; regulation of the pharmaceutical industry; the political-economic structure of the pharmaceutical industry; consumption/consumerism of medications; and bio-knowledge. The (...) article suggests that a systematic analysis of these areas leads one to consider pharmacological practice a sui generis apparatus of power, which reaches beyond the purely disciplinary and biopolitical levels to encompass molecular configurations, thereby giving rise not only to new types of government over life, but also to new struggles for life, extending from molecular to population-wide levels. (shrink)

Ethical concerns surrounding medical research in resource-poor settings. including the 'pharming' out or outsourcing or ‘offshoring’ of clinical trials, and how these relate to the economic, historical and political dimensions of the global scientific field, are a recurrent theme across the different social science disciplines.