NCJ Number
78270
Date Published
1980
Length
394 pages
Annotation
A comprehensive treatment of corporate crime and its control is presented in this book, which focuses primarily on U.S. businesses, although political and legal problems posed by large multinational corporations are also addressed.
Abstract
This work documents the facts behind instances of unethical and illegal corporate practices. It begins by explaining the nature of corporate crime, tracing the growth and development of the corporation, and examining the complex global operations of the modern corporation. The text also looks at the structure of large-scale organizations and its relation to corporate crime, explains the rationale behind business crimes, examines corporate defenses for law violations, and discusses the political influences wielded by corporations. Illegal and unethical practices are delineated in the oil, auto, and pharmaceutical industries and in government. Examples of illicit corporate practices include Firestone officials making a radial tire they knew to be unsafe, Gulf Oil executives bribing an Internal Revenue Service agent and receiving only minimal punishment, and Allied Chemical knowingly dumping kepone into a river. The work also analyzes such illegal acts of false or misleading advertising, price fixing, bribery, tax evasion, the marketing of unsafe or untested products, antitrust offenses, and other law violations. The penalties available to Federal regulatory agencies against corporations, constraints on enforcement, and the effectiveness of agency efforts are outlined. The disparity in punishment between corporate crimes and other crimes, such as burglary and robbery, is highlighted, and the criminal liability of the corporate executive is examined. A discussion of measures to control corporate crime focuses on development of a stronger business ethic, corporate organizational reform, decentralization and divestiture, expansion of enforcement staffs, and other reforms. The work emphasizes the fact that illegal practices are not essential to successful corporate operations and that many firms do maintain laudable ethical standards. Appendixes cite corporation reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, penalities available to regulatory agencies, the number of corporate violations and the number of manufacturing corporations in violation, the number of sanctions against manufacturing corporations by sanction type, and other data. An index, footnotes, and over 500 references are provided.