NCJ Number
82943
Date Published
1982
Length
169 pages
Annotation
This analysis of organizational crime focuses on the cases of Lockheed Corporation's payments to Japanese officials to sell aircraft, the Valachi hearings on La Cosa Nostra, and the financing of Watergate to demonstrate how new laws against bribery of government officials fail to address the causes of these white collar crimes.
Abstract
The book first describes Lockheed's business strategies and decisions to comply with Japanese officials' requests for extra payments in return for promoting the sale of the Tristar airbus between 1969 and 1975. Primary sources for this case study were Senate testimony, Japanese trial documents, an autobiographical account, and an interview with a former president of Lockheed. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed complaints against Lockheed in April 1976 after more than a year of investigations. At the same time, the unsuccessful Watergate burglary forced other corporations to admit their role in financing the 1972 re-election campaign, and Senate hearings beginning in May 1975 revealed that other U.S. corporations were making illegal payments to foreign officials. A review of these events concludes with a discussion of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 and emphasizes that Congress passed an impractical, idealistic law because it failed to view the problem as a function of the business and political environment. Summaries of the Valachi hearings and investigations into corporate contributions to the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President provide additional support for the theory that legislation to combat organizational crime is ineffective because it is based on ideological doctrine rather than empirical evidence. The Omnibus Crime Control Acts of 1968 and 1970 and the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974 are examined, with attention to their similarities with the Lockheed case and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Finally, the book applies existing theories of organizational misbehavior to the Lockheed case to evaluate their effectiveness in explaining the causes of these events. Footnotes, an index, and approximately 160 references are included.