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The purpose of this paper is to explore and compare three different principles – the culpability, capacity and concern principles – for allocating responsibility for governance in a multi‐level context of addressing sustainable development.

The principles are first analysed from a theoretical and normative standpoint, linking to earlier literature on for example, the contribution principle, subsidiarity and global citizenship. Then the three principles are analysed in an empirical setting. The selected case is the issue complex around the health and environmental concerns from pesticide use in developing countries. Document analysis and semi‐structured interviews were carried out with relevant stakeholders from local, national and global governance levels on themes which enabled analysis of the workability and justness of the principles and whether they were already applied to some degree.

Analysis of the case shows the mutual complementarity of the three principles for allocating responsibility for governance, especially when culpability and capacity are dispersed across different agents and levels. However, the concern and capacity principles emerged as more important and promising. The results indicated the need for moving the value basis of agents towards more selfless global concern in order to create an effective multi‐level governance system.

The results may help policymakers at different levels to analyse more systematically who should assume responsibility for sustainable development governance and why.

Extends the analysis of principles for allocating responsibility for global issues.

The purpose of this paper is to assess if federal judges have sentenced criminal corporations to fines that are consistent with the seriousness of the offense and the blameworthiness of the organization, which would be in line with the directives from the US Sentencing Guidelines. This paper will also use the focal concerns framework to measure organizational blameworthiness.

This paper uses secondary data from federal sentencing documents, collected by the US Sentencing Commission, for cases that were adjudicated between October 1, 2010 and September 30, 2017.

Results showed that the focal concerns framework can be used to define potential constructs for blameworthiness and that an organization’s culpability score was a significant predictor in whether the company received a higher fine.

The data are unable to examine two of the three measures of focal concerns. Cross-sectional data limits the ability to draw conclusions regarding cause and effect between blameworthiness and monetary fines.

Results imply that judges are sentencing corporations that have higher culpability scores to more severe fines, in accordance with both the federal Sentencing Guidelines and focal concerns framework.

This study is one of the first to apply the focal concerns framework, usually used to examine the sentencing of individuals, to the sentencing of corporations. It is also one of the first to attempt to empirically define blameworthiness.

Concerns about the risk of traffic collision injury to both police officers and bystanders are increasing as the use of in-vehicle technologies becoming widespread among agencies. This study used national and California data to characterize traffic collisions in which a police vehicle was involved. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors used a California traffic collision database to retrospectively identify collisions that involved police vehicles for years 2007-2010. The authors summarized collision characteristics with descriptive methods and used log-binomial regression to estimate associations between personal and collision characteristics with officer culpability.

The authors identified 5,233 traffic collisions in California. In total, 10 percent of law enforcement vehicles were motorcycles. In all, 9 percent of cruisers struck a pedestrian or bicyclist, compared with only 2 percent of motorcycles. Compared with officers aged 50 or older, officers in younger age categories were progressively much more likely to have been culpable. Motorcycle officers were 33 percent less likely to be culpable for their collision involvements. Approximately 100 fatal collisions involving a law enforcement vehicle occur each year in the USA.

The findings from this study indicate that approximately 1,300 injury-producing traffic collisions occur each year in California that involve a law enforcement vehicle. The authors found that younger age, female sex, cruiser operation, traveling unbelted, and single-vehicle collision involvement were positively associated with officer culpability. Officer race and community population were not significantly associated with culpability. The occurrence of fatal collisions in the USA was stable over a 12-year period.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate followers’ judgments of leader culpability and learning during a crisis, and the extent to which judgments of culpability create hopelessness and reduce crisis learning. The authors also study factors that moderate these relationships.

Using the survey method the authors collected data from 354 individuals from a nonprofit organization that filed for bankruptcy. Respondents’ comments also provided qualitative data that was used to triangulate the findings.

The authors find that followers made judgments of leader culpability and reported crisis learning. However, followers’ judgments have no direct effect on their crisis learning, but have an indirect effect by increasing hopelessness. The authors also find that followers’ job satisfaction and perceptions of sufficient crisis communications moderate this relationship. The qualitative data provides insights into the areas on which leaders were judged, and what was learned during the crisis.

More research on internal stakeholders’ judgments of their leaders during organizational crises is important as they affect followers’ psychological states and behaviors. Future research can test the findings in a longitudinal study.

Leaders need to pay attention to the judgments of their followers during a crisis as they could foster hopelessness and reduce learning. Providing sufficient crisis communications and enabling job satisfaction could lessen these negative effects.

Extant research tends to focus on the judgments of external stakeholders during crises. This study is one of the first to examine the effects of internal stakeholders’ judgments of leader culpability on their sense of hopelessness and crisis learning, and the moderating factors that reduce their negative effects. The authors also contribute to understanding what aspects of leadership are judged by followers during a crisis, and what followers learn from a crisis. These are areas that have not been previously examined in crisis management research. The authors also provide evidence from individuals in an actual organization in crisis which tends not to be the norm in crisis attribution and crisis learning research.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the culpability of independent directors (IDs) in a public listed company under clause 49 of the listing agreement of the Securities Exchange Board of India, which, primarily, is the corporate governance mandate in India.

This paper has been developed on the basis of intensive interviews conducted with 16 legal experts working with 50 top listed companies and seven advocates from the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India, literature survey from research papers, bare acts and policy guidelines on corporate governance by the Government of India.

Two contrary opinions are being rendered on the culpability of IDs. The first proposes a strict and absolute penalty on all directors which would deter them from colluding with promoters. The second proposes that IDs should not be tarred with the same brush unless conclusive evidence of collusion is produced. These contrary opinions are herein analyzed and recommendations put forward.

The research paper attempts to study only the culpability of IDs. It envisages the appointments of IDs onto boards without deliberation on the issue assuming that these appointments are made in good faith and trust.

The research paper attempts to study whether the IDs who are non‐executive directors and who do not have a pecuniary relationship with the company actually share a fiduciary relationship with the shareholders and observe the principle of conflict of interest. There are some compelling reasons for them to alienate liabilities given the dramatic effects of financial disarray as in the case of Satyam.

Offenders with intellectual disability (ID) who commit arson and other acts of fire setting are over-represented in the criminal justice system in Australia, as in many other jurisdictions. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the judicial considerations that influence sentencing in these cases.

Case law was utilised to locate and analyse judges’ sentencing remarks for offenders with ID found guilty of an offence of arson. These data were subject to Inductive Content Analysis to establish the major judicial considerations in sentencing.

Seven common issues emerged: general deterrence, seriousness of arson, rehabilitation, sentencing options, moral culpability, protection of the community, and punishment. Judges noted that they handed down reduced sentences to persons with ID relative to the severity of their offending, that they considered people with ID to have low levels of moral culpability, and that these offenders did not provide good examples for community deterrence.

The current study highlights the need for judges to have available a range of sentencing options, including diversion and treatment/rehabilitation programmes for persons with ID, particularly for those involved in more serious offences such as arson.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate followers’ judgments of the culpability of their leaders and the organization’s external stakeholders in causing a crisis. The authors study the differences in effects of these judgments on their trust toward their leaders, their emotional exhaustion, and their levels of organizational identification.

Using the survey method the authors collected data from 354 individuals from an organization that filed for bankruptcy. Respondents’ comments also provided qualitative data that was used to triangulate the findings.

The authors find that individuals’ judgments that their leaders were culpable led to reduced trust, increased emotional exhaustion, and contrary to expectations reduced organizational identification. Therefore, it appears that in situations of perceived leader culpability during a crisis, followers tightly couple their leaders with the organization as a whole. In contrast, their judgments that external stakeholders were culpable were associated with increased trust toward their leaders, increased organizational identification, and they had no relationship with their levels of emotional exhaustion. The analysis of the qualitative data provides some insights into their judgments and the dependent variables.

Organizational members’ judgments of culpability are important factors that should be considered in crisis management research, and in research on trust, emotional exhaustion, and organizational identification. A limitation of the study is that it is cross-sectional in nature. Therefore, future research could test the findings in a longitudinal study.

Leaders need to understand the judgments of their followers during an organizational crisis. These judgments have implications for when and how leaders can mobilize their followers and the leadership tasks during crisis containment.

Extant research tends to focus on the judgments of external stakeholders during a crisis. This study is one of the first to examine the effects of internal stakeholders’ judgments of culpability for causing a crisis on their trust, emotional exhaustion, and organizational identification. Further, existing empirical studies on followers’ attributions during a crisis tend to be laboratory based. The study provides empirical evidence from individuals in an actual organization in crisis.