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Corporate misconduct carries significant social and economic costs, and therefore regulators and other stakeholders seek to deter it. Despite the significant costs and deterrence efforts, corporate misconduct is widespread and our understanding of it is limited. As argued in this chapter, one key reason for this is the lack of understanding of the benefits and penalties of misconduct for the companies and individuals involved, as well as the detection of such behavior. This chapter seeks to advance our understanding of corporate misconduct and builds on the rational choice model (RCM) – where the decision to engage in misconduct hinges on a calculation of the expected costs and benefit – and links it to research in organization theory and strategy. Specifically, it sets a research agenda at the intersection of organizational and strategic perspectives, to deepen our understanding of corporate misconduct and shed light on opportunities for empirical and theoretical research which can potentially aid in developing effective deterrence strategies.

This study aims to analyze corporate mail and wire fraud penalties, using bounded rationality in decision-making and assessing internal and external influences on prosecutorial choices.

The study analyzed 467 cases from 1992 to 2019, using data from the Corporate Prosecution Registry of the University of Virginia School of Law and Duke University School of Law. It examined corporations facing mail and wire fraud charges and other fraud crimes. Multiple regression linked predictor variables to the dependent variable, total payment.

The study found that corporate penalties tend to be lower for financial institutions or corporations in countries with US free trade agreements. Conversely, penalties are higher when the company is a U.S. public company or filed in districts with more pending criminal cases.

This study’s originality lies in applying the bounded rationality model to assess corporate prosecutorial decisions, unveiling external factors’ influence on corporate penalties.

The purpose of this study is to examine regulatory sanctions from an emerging economy perspective and analyzing the impact of regulators imposed monetary sanctions on banks’ performance.

The study adopted correlational research design to examine the effect of regulatory penalties on the performance of deposit money banks in Nigeria. This study used panel data from a sample of 15 deposit money banks in Nigeria for the period of 2006-2015. Multiple regression analysis was carried out.

Results showed that penalties imposed by regulators in the Nigerian banking industry have no significant impact on the bottom line of the defaulters. Penalties imposed on foreign exchange and international trade related infraction showed that the cost of penalties is below the benefits enjoyed from such infractions.

The insignificant impact of penalties on performance implies that deposit money banks have considered penalties imposed by regulators as operational expenses and transferred such to customers.

The study differs from other studies that examined regulatory penalties on performance by focusing on financial performance and using data from an emerging economy perceived to have weak regulatory environment.

This paper suggests that the proliferation of highly sophisticated corporate tax shelters has been a major reason for the decline of corporate income tax as a percentage of GDP and of total Federal receipts. Many of these shelters have extended beyond solid tax planning and into the realm of subversion. The controversy surrounding possible remedies for these abuses is just as lively as the debates surrounding the tax shelters themselves. This article explores the nature of a variety of tax shelters in an effort to illustrate the insidious nature of the corporate tax shelter problem and then discusses solutions, both legislative and nonlegislative, designed to curb these abuses.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the federal sentencing of organizational probation for environmental offenders using the focal concerns. Those organizations that are more blameworthy should be sentenced to longer probation terms. However, little research has been conducted to examine whether probation is being sentenced accordingly. This is especially true for organizations convicted of environmental offenses, which are often thought of as deserving of increased penalties compared to non-environmental offenses.

This study used quantitative federal sentencing data from 2011 to 2020 (n = 1,436) and eight potential measures of blameworthiness grounded in the focal concerns.

The results showed that those organizations convicted of environmental crimes received 30% longer probation sentences than those not convicted of environmental crimes. However, additional measurements of blameworthiness derived from the existing literature of focal concerns were not relevant to probation sentencing decisions.

This study extends the application of the focal concerns and increases the body of knowledge regarding the sentencing of federal environmental offenders.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between enforcement and compliance and to report on the results of an empirical study that assesses the impact of enforcement action by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) on the subsequent compliance by violators.

Following an extensive literature review, a sample of 50 similar complaints made to ASIC during the 2005/2006 financial year, were selected and grouped into two samples. The first sample, described as the enforcement sample, comprised of complaints that had been resourced for investigation by ASIC, and the second sample, described as the non‐enforcement sample, comprised of complaints that had not been resourced for investigation. An analysis was conducted to compare how many subsequent complaints had been received by ASIC in the following three years against members of the two samples.

The empirical evidence of the decrease in subsequent complaints against corporate violators subject to enforcement action clearly supports the argument that enforcement action does have an impact on corporate compliance of those violators. However, it has to be acknowledged that differences in rates of subsequent violation still do not guarantee that there is a cause and effect relationship between compliance and enforcement, as it is possible enforcement action may have resulted in violators becoming better at avoiding detection and complaint.

The samples were limited to complaints identified in the 2005/2006 year and only taken from two of ASIC's five regulatory categories, so caution is required when interpreting and making generalisations from the results. Only three years of subsequent complaints were examined so the study was limited to the examination of relatively short‐term effects of enforcement action.

Corporate regulators such as ASIC now need to obtain and examine qualitative data from violators and potential violators to gain insights into their actions and motivations after investigation and enforcement actions. This may enable regulators to better understand the impact on violators themselves and the extent to which media reporting of enforcement action may have a demonstration effect on potential violators.

The paper provides valuable empirical evidence of the influence of enforcement on compliance, which should be of interest to corporate regulators and those interested in regulation and corporate governance.

‘Public officials’ are those who hold positions of responsibility and trust in a country, including politicians and top civil servants. Article 1 of the UN Code of Conduct for Public Officials 1996 states that a public office implies:

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.

It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.

Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.

The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.

Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.

To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.

Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.

Using the ethical consequentialist theory of utilitarianism, this paper aims to demonstrate the correlation between the prosecution of Arthur Andersen LLP and the United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) increased use of pretrial diversion agreements, both nonprosecution and deferred prosecution agreements (N/DPA) for criminal corporations.

Through an analysis of previous literature, the United States Justice Manual, and data from the Corporate Prosecution Registry, this study examines the trend of N/DPAs from 1992 to 2021. Specifically, the data is examined to assess whether a pattern exists before and after the 2002 prosecution of Andersen.

This study finds an exponential increase of N/DPAs after Andersen’s prosecution. The DOJ’s basis for the increased use of these agreements is rooted in the utilitarian theory that the punishment of criminal corporations should deter and rehabilitate behavior while also maximizing the benefit to society (e.g. shareholders, employees and business community). The justice manual, memorandums and public speeches explicitly promote the use of N/DPAs for corporations to minimize collateral damage and the potential for negative societal impact.

This study applies a utilitarian framework to explain the criminal justice system’s increased use of pretrial diversion agreements for criminal corporations.

Already suffering reputational damage from the global financial crisis, banks face a further loss of trust due to their poor money laundering (ML) compliance practices. As confidence-driven institutions, the loss of reputation stemming from inadequate compliance with regulations and policies labels banks as facilitators of crime and destroys public trust both in the bank itself, peer banks and the wider banking system. Considering the links between financial stability and adverse publicity about banks, this paper aims to critically examine the implications of ML-specific bank information on financial stability.

This paper adopts a content analysis and a theoretical discussion by critically evaluating the role of bank compliance information on stability with references to recent case studies.

This paper establishes that availability of information regarding a bank involved in or facilitating ML might pose a threat to financial stability if bank counterparties cut their ties with the bank in question and when bank stakeholders show a strong and sudden negative reaction to adverse publicity. Though recent ML scandals have not caused immediate instability, general loss of confidence associated with reputational risk have had a destabilising effect on affected banks’ capital and liquidity.

There has been surprisingly little discussion to date on the impact of publicly available bank information on financial stability and public confidence within the ML compliance framework. This paper approaches the issue of publicly available banking compliance information solely through the prism of public confidence and reputational risk and its impact on macro-stability by examining recent ML scandals.