1 Edwin Sutherland initially defined “white collar crime” as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation” Edwin H. Sutherland, White Collar Crime: The Uncut Version 9 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983). The United States Department of Justice has offered the following definition: “Those crimes that are committed by non-physical means to avoid payment or loss of money or to obtain business or personal advantage where success depends upon guile or concealment.” Tony G. Poveda, Rethinking White-Collar Crime 134 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994). For our purposes, the most important subcategories or subtypes of white-collar crime are (1) crimes against organizations or society that occur because the person's occupation allowed their commission (e. g., bank embezzlement by tellers) and (2) crimes against consumers or society that occur because a person did their job within their organization (e. g., “corporate crimes”). Marshall B. Clinard & Richard Quinney, Criminal Behavior Systems: A Typology (New York: Free Press, 1973); Laura Shill Schrager & Short, James F. Jr., “Toward a Sociology of Organized Crime,” 25 Soc. Prob. 407 (1978). In this article we are interested almost exclusively in the latter category of white-collar crimes, those committed by organizational actors for the organization.Google Scholar

2 Marshall B. Clinard & Peter C. Yeager, Corporate Crime 281 (New York: Free Press, 1980) (“Clinard & Yeager, Corporate Crime”).Google Scholar

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4 As Coffee notes, fines large enough to deter may be so large that they put the organization's viability at risk. Coffee, John C., “No Soul to Damn: No Body to Kick: An Unscandalized Inquiry into the Problem of Corporate Punishment,” 79 Mich. L. Rev. 386, 389 (1981). Even in the case of egregious behavior, it rarely seems to be wise to force the dissolution of the company, with disastrous consequences on employees and others; see Richard B. Sobol, Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Most people argue for a mixed response to corporate crime, holding both the organization and its agents responsible. Coffee, 79 Mich. L. Rev.; Christopher Stone, Where the Law Ends: The Social Control of Corporate Behavior (New York: Harper & Row, 1975) (“Stone, Where the Law Ends”); id., ”The Place of Enterprise Liability in the Control of Corporate Conduct,” 90 Yale L. J. 1 (1980).Google Scholar

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6 Other writers have used different terminology to indicate the nature of Japanese capitalism, such as “welfare corporatism”: Ronald P. Dore, British Factory-Japanese Factory: The Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973) (“Dore, British Factory”); James Lincoln & Arne Kalleberg, Culture, Control and Commitment: A Study of Work Organization and Work Attitudes in the United States and Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) (“Lincoln & Kalleberg, Culture, Control and Commitment”) and “alliance capitalism” (Michael L. Gerlach, Alliance Capitalism: The Social Organization of Japanese Business (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) (“Gerlach, Alliance Capitalism”).Google Scholar

7 Ideally, our research would have involved national surveys of these three societies. Cost considerations, however, prohibited this approach.Google Scholar

8 As we use the term in this article, culture involves ideas about the nature of persons (and of organizations) and their proper place in the social order. V. Lee Hamilton & Joseph Sanders, Everyday Justice: Responsibility and the Individual in Japan and the United States 46 New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992) (“Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice”); Richard Shweder, Thinking through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

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17 Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice; Kelly Shaver, The Attribution of Blame: Causality, Responsibility and Blameworthiness (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1985) (“Shaver, Attribution of Blame”); Herbert Packer, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (Palo Alto, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1968) (“Packer, Limits”).Google Scholar

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20 Walster, Elaine, “Assignment of Responsibility for an Accident,” 3 J. Personality & Soc. Psychol. 73 (1966).Google Scholar

21 Richard Lempert & Joseph Sanders, An Invitation to Law and Social Science (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986) (“Lempert & Sanders, Invitation”); Lee Hamilton, V., “Who Is Responsible? Toward a Social Psychology of Responsibility Attribution,” 41 Soc. Psychol. 316 (1978); Packer, Limits.Google Scholar

22 Lee Hamilton, V. & Sanders, Joseph, “Effects of Roles and Deeds on Responsibility Judgments: The Normative Structure of Wrongdoing,” 44 Soc. Psychol. Q. 237 (1981).Google Scholar

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24 James S. Coleman, The Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) (“Coleman, Foundations”).Google Scholar

25 V. Lee Hamilton & Joseph Sanders, “Responsibility and Risk in Organizational Crimes of Obedience,”in B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings, eds., 14 Research in Organizational Behavior 49–90 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1992) (“Hamilton & Sanders, ‘Responsibility & Risk”).Google Scholar

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27 Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice (cited in note 8); Lee Hamilton, V., “Chains of Command: Responsibility Attribution in Hierarchies,” 16 J. Applied Soc. Psychol. 118 (1986).Google Scholar

28 Kelman & Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience (cited in note 3).Google Scholar

29 Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice 126–27.Google Scholar

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32 Hamilton & Sanders, “Responsibility & Risk.”Google Scholar

33 Kelman & Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience (cited in note 3); Diane Vaughan, Controlling Unlawful Organizational Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); id., “The Macro-Micro Connection in White-Collar Crime Theory,”in Kip Schlegel & David Weisburd, eds., White Collar Crime Reconsidered (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992); Hans, Valerie & Lofquist, William, “Jurors' Judgments of Business Liability in Tort Cases: Implications for the Litigation Explosion,” 26 Law & Soc'y Rev. 85 (1992).Google Scholar

In such situations the legal system may settle for some middle-level manager who cannot fully avail himself of the excuse of ignorance or obedience. Sometimes, the logic of responsibility inside organizations produces the proverbial “vice president in charge of going to jail.” Brent Fisse & John Braithwaite, Corporations, Crime and Accountability (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

34 Lee Hamilton, V. & Sanders, Joseph, “Crimes of Obedience and Conformity in the Workplace: Surveys of Americans, Russians and Japanese,” 51 J. Soc. Issues 67 (1995).Google Scholar

Following Lempert & Sanders, Invitation 26 (cited in note 21), we use the word “excuse” as a generic term to describe an “explanation and definition of a situation that absolves or mitigates the offerer's responsibility for an untoward event.” Such explanations are sometimes called “accounts.” See Scott, Marvin & Lyman, Stanford, “Accounts,” 33 Am. Soc. Rev. 46–62 (1968); Blum, Alan & McHugh, Peter, “Social Ascription of Motives,” 36 Am. Soc. Rev. 98 (1971). Excuses differ from justifications, which occur when actors admit their involvement in an event and their responsibility, but deny that they have done anything wrong. “Selfdefense” is a justification in this sense. A plea of insanity, on the other hand, is an excuse.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 James William Coleman, The Criminal Elite: The Sociology of White Collar Crime 217 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1989) (“Coleman, Criminal Elite”).Google Scholar

36 Kip Schlegel, Just Deserts for Corporate Criminals 79 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990) (Schlegel, Just Deserts”).Google Scholar

37 Coleman, Foundations (cited in note 24).Google Scholar

38 George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).Google Scholar

39 Coleman, Foundations 507–8.Google Scholar

40 French, Collective/Corporate Responsibility (cited in note 5); Schlegel, Just Deserts.Google Scholar

41 Fisse & Braithwaite, Corporations, Crime 17 (cited in note 5).Google Scholar

42 Id. at 123.Google Scholar

43 See Cressey, Donald R., “The Poverty of Theory in Corporate Criminal Research,” 1 Advances in Crim. Theory 31 (1988); Velasquez, Manuel, “Why Corporations Are Not Morally Responsible for Anything They Do,” 2 Bus. & Professional Ethics J. 1 (1983).Google Scholar

44 Fisse & Braithwaite, Corporations, Crime. Google Scholar

45 This is similar to the rule in the American tort law system, which holds employers responsible upon proof of negligent behavior of an employee acting within the scope of his or her employment.Google Scholar

46 See Coleman, Foundations 577.Google Scholar

47 Robert E. Cole, Japanese Blue Collar: The Changing Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); id., Work, Mobility, and Participation: A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).Google Scholar

48 Paul DiMaggio, “Nadel's Paradox Revisited: Relational and Cultural Aspects of Organizational Structure,” in N. Nohria & R. G. Eccles, eds., Networks and Organizations: Structure, Form, and Action 119 (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1992) (“Nohria & Eccles, Networks”).Google Scholar

49 Michael L. Gerlach & James R. Lincoln, “The Organization of Business Networks in the United States and Japan,” in Nohria & Eccles, Networks; Lincoln & Kalleberg, Culture, Control and Commitment (cited in note 6).Google Scholar

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54 Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Nakane, Japanese Society (cited in note 10).Google Scholar

55 Smith, Japanese Society 65 (cited in note 9). We should be careful not to overstate the difference. As Atsumi points out, it would be a misconception to think that tsukiai makes co-workers into close friends; theirs is still an employment relationship. Atsumi, Reiko, “Tsukiai-Obligatory Personal Relationships of Japanese White-Collar Company Employees,” 38 Hum. Organization 63 (1979). Feeling like family is not necessarily the same thing as being family. The point is that many Japanese employees are embedded in a relationship that is more complex and more enduring than that of their American counterparts.Google Scholar

56 Lincoln, & Kalleberg, , Culture, Control and Commitment 114.Google Scholar

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65 Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice 52 (cited in note 8). Individualism is a complicated idea. Luke describes four dimensions of individualism: (1) accepting the intrinsic moral worth of individuals, (2) advocating the autonomy of individual thought and action, (3) acknowledging the importance of individual privacy, and (4) supporting self-development as a desitable goal. Steven Lukes, Individualism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973). Japanese conceptions of the social actor in fact are quite individualistic on some of these dimensions, espcially moral worth and self-development. Japanese attention to selfdevelopment and belief in meritocracy predates Western influence. Ronald P. Dore, “Mobility, Equality, and Individualism in Modem Japan, in R. P. Dore, ed., Aspects of Social Change In Modem Japan (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1967). Ikegami has recently coined the phrase “honorific individualism” in his book tracing the historical development of these aspects of individualism in Japan. He and others note that absent these components of individualism it would be difficult to explain Japan's rapid change from a feudal to an advanced capitalist society. Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai; Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan 350 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

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66 Takao Suzuki, Japanese and the Japanese: Words in Culture 135 (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1978).Google Scholar

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There is an asymmetry between relationships of low and high solidarity in terms of their likelihood of involving inequality. In societies where relationships are characteristically low in solidarity, the actor is typically thought of and referred to as an equal individual (Hamilton, & Sanders, , Everyday Justice 58).Google Scholar

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These conceptions of the self parallel the cultural framework developed by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky (Mary Douglas, Risk And Blam: Essays in Cultural Theory (London: Routledge, 1992); id., “The Person in an Enterprise Culture,” in S. Heap & A. Ross, eds., Understanding the Enterprise Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992) (“Heap & Ross, Enterprise Culture”); Mary Douglas & Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmtal Dangers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Thompson et al., Cultural Theory (cited in note 12). This work describes four idealtypical political cultures: fatalism, individualism, hierarchical collectivism, and egalitarianism 1978). (Polisar, Daniel & Wildavsky, Aaron, “From Individual to System Blame: A Cultural Analysis of Historical Change in the Law of Torts,” 1 J. Pol'y Hist. 129 (1989); Michael Thompson, “The Dynamics of Cultural Theory and Their Implications for the Enterprise Culture,”in Heap & Ross, Enterprise Culture). As Kagan notes, each cultural perspective may employ differing attributions of responsibility for harm. Robert Kagan, “Responsibility, Accountability, and Adversarial Legalism” at 12 (presented at Law & Society Association annual meeting, Toronto, 1995).Google Scholar

Fatalism and individualism define a cultural dichotomy concerning individual actors. Together, they describe an “individualistic” dimension. Fatalism tends to blame no one for misfortune, sometimes because of a belief that individuals lack the ability to control events. Individualism holds individuals responsible for their acts of intentional wrongdoing and lack of due care. The egalitarian-hierarchical dimension defines opposite orientations to communal/collectivist forces. A hierarchical culture respects and gives deference to expertise and authority. “[P]eople in authority are presumed to know what they are doing and to have acted reasonably unless proven otherwise” (Polisar, & Wildavsky, , 1 J. Pol'y Hist. at 149). Egalitarian cultures are more distrustful of hierarchies and the power structures they generate. Hierarchical cultures are more deferential to excuses based on following the directive of a superior.Google Scholar

70 We must emphasize that this discussion concerns general cultural values, and not an assessment of the existing social structure or the actual pressures to conform experienced by individuals in organizations. An individualistic perspective on the self in the United States does not mean individuals are unconstrained in their actions, only that they will tend to be judged as if they were.Google Scholar

71 This is a different issue than whether the Japanese are less likely to suspect corporate malfeasance when untoward events occur. By most accounts, hierarchical political cultures create a presumption of correct behavior, whereas egalitarian cultures are quicker to assume untoward outcomes are the result of wrongful behavior. Polisar, & Wildavsky, , 1 J. Pol'y Hist. at 148; Sheila Jasanoff, “Acceptable Evidence in a Pluralistic Society,”in Deborah Mayo & Rachelle Hollander, eds., Acceptable Evidence: Science and Values in Risk Management (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

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73 See sources cited in note 13.Google Scholar

74 Sindler, Riley M., “Protections for Mobilizing Improvements in the Workplace: United States and Russia,” 9 Am. U. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 309 (1993); William Moskoff, Hard Times: Impoverishment and Protest in the Perestroika Years 184 (Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1993) (“Moskoff, Hard Times”).Google Scholar

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76 Aaron Wildavsky, “The Soviet System,”in A. Wildavsky, ed., Beyond Containment: Altermative American Policies toward the Soviet Union (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1983).Google Scholar

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77 Nicolai N. Petro, The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation of Political Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

78 Some recent scholarship has argued that the industrial ministries were dominant political players in Soviet politics and conflicts between the ministries and national politicians were an important source of the political and economic crises leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Stephen Whitefield, Industrial Power and the Soviet State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).Google Scholar

79 Id. at 42.Google Scholar

80 Hendley, 5 Transat'l L. & Contemp. Prob. 43 (cited in note 16).Google Scholar

81 Id. at 52.Google Scholar

82 Joseph S. Berliner, The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry 162–63 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976). Paradoxically from a capitalist perspective, the relative inability to release workers was accompanied by a general hoarding of labor by enterprises. Because enterprises were not penalized for high production costs hoarded labor posed few real costs. However, the excess workers could prove useful for purposes of “storming,” the practice of increasing production to meet gross output targets at the end of the month. Philip J. Bryson, The Reluctant Retreat: The Soviet and East German Departure from Central Planing 13 (Brookfield, Vt.: Dartmouth, 1995). The effect of hoarding and the difficulty of discharging unnecessary or unproductive workers led to considerable underemplovent. In 1991 the labor minister estimated that nationwide the labor surplus was in the neighborhood of 28 million people. Moskoff, Hard Times 162.Google Scholar

83 Moskoff, Hard Times (cited in note 74).Google Scholar

84 The survey was conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Maryland.Google Scholar

85 The Japanese group was lead by Professor Kazuhiko Tokoro from Rikkyo University and included Naotaka Kato, Mikio Kawai, Takashi Kubo, Kubo, and Haruo Nishimura. We had worked with Professors Nishimura and Tokora on earlier collaborations. The Russian colleagues included Gennady Denisovsky, Polina Kozyreva, and Michael Matskovsky, all from the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, whom we had also worked with on an earlier collaboration.Google Scholar

86 The advantage of vignette experiments is the relative clarity of causal inferences. A disadvantage is that judgments with respect to any specific vignette may be partly the result of idiosyncratic factors embedded in the story rather than general underlying decision rules. Oneway to address this problem is to ask multiple vignettes on basically similar issues. We have adopted that strategy in this study. For general discussions of using vignettes inside surveys, see Peter H. Rossi & Steven L. Nock, eds., Measuring Social Judgments: The Factorial Survey Approach (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage Publications, 1982).Google Scholar

87 In the language of the white-collar crime literature, each of these stories focuses on “organizational crime” as compared to “occupational crime,” e. g., employee theft (Coleman, Criminal Elite (cited in note 35)).Google Scholar

88 The full text of all versions of all vignettes are available from the authors on request.Google Scholar

89 Stone, Where the Law Ends (cited in note 4).Google Scholar

90 The Failure to Publicize story involves a secondary rather than primary harm. The newspaper organization is not the creator of the toxic waste. However, wrongdoing by the media (information transmission organizations) would characteristically involve this sort of secondary injury (Failure to Publicize and prevent harm). We anticipated that the average responsibility of the actor in this vignette might be lower for this reason, but we expected thatall three variables (type of influence, hierarchy, and mental state) would exert some effect across all vignettes.Google Scholar

91 Kelman & Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience (cited in note 3).Google Scholar

92 The first of these questions was used to assess whether vignettes were comparable in severity; the second was a manipulation check for influence type; the third was a manipulation check for the actor's mental state.Google Scholar

93 As in other situations of multiple wrongdoers, it is possible that each person will be adjudged fully responsible for what happened. In this sense, there can be more than 100% responsibility for an untoward act.Google Scholar

94 Shaver, Attribution of Blame (cited in note 17); Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice 111 (cited in note 8).Google Scholar

95 Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice 114.Google Scholar

96 Id. at 111.Google Scholar

97 In addition, we believed that the general nature of the instructions given in the authority/obedience conditions would offer the actor a weaker excuse of just following orders.Google Scholar

98 The F-statistics presented in tables 1–4 are from ANOVA analyses that includes the three experimental variables and nation (Japan, Russia, United States). We have included nation in these analyses because, as we shall see below, this variable has a substantial effect on many responsibility judgments. Excluding nation from the analyses slightly alters the F-statistics. No effects that are not significant with nation in the models become significant when it is excluded. Two effects that are significant with nation included fail to reach significance when it is excluded: the mental state-influence interaction effect on co-worker responsibility in the Factory Waste vignette (table 2) and the influence effect on company responsibility in the Dangerous Drug vignette (table 4). In addition, the effect of hierarchy on boss responsibility in the Faulty Design vignette is significant at 0.05, not 0.01 (table 3).Google Scholar

We have presented F-statistics in this and subsequent tables for the sake of parsimony. Some readers, however, may gain a better feel for the data by knowing how these values translate into differences in means. The means (on a 100-point scale) for actor responsibility in the Factory Waste story are as follows: mental state: low = 78, high = 85; hierarchy: subordinate = 77, authority = 86; influence: obedience = 74, conformity = 80; autonomy = 89. The smallest significant difference reported in this table, the F of 6.7 for the mental state effect in the Faulty Design vignette, represents a mean difference of four points (low = 61, high = 65).Google Scholar

99 The “superior” boss in the Failure to Publicize story was held more responsible than the “subordinate” boss.Google Scholar

100 There were two significant mental state/influence interactions, in the Factory Waste and Dangerous Drug vignettes, but neither supported our hypothesis. In the Factory Waste case, there was a mental state effect in the conformity condition, but not in the obedience condition. In the Dangerous Drug vignette, the interaction was also partly due to a mental state effect in the conformity condition and partly due to the fact that in the autonomy condition the boss was held less responsible in the high mental state condition than in the low mental state condition. Both of these results can be explained in a post hoc fashion, but they clearly do not support our hypothesis.Google Scholar

101 See Jacob Cohen & Patricia Cohen, Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences 198–217 (2d ed. Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum, 1983).Google Scholar

102 Id. at 83–198.Google Scholar

103 One effect is significant at 0.05 but not at 0.01. In the Dangerous Drug vignette, there is a negative effect of mental state on company responsibility.Google Scholar

104 Actor responsibility and company responsibility are significantly correlated (.01) in the Faulty Design, Dangerous Drug, and Failure to Publicize vignettes.Google Scholar

105 Here and elsewhere in this report we have given a substantive interpretation to cross-national differences in means. One must be very cautious when doing this. The problem is one of establishing equivalence (Adam Przeworski & Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry 113–30 (Malabar, Fla.: Krieger Publishing. Co., 1982) (“Przeworski & Teune, Logic”); Nihar R. Mrinal, Uma Singhal Mrinal, & Harold Takooshian, “Research Methods for Studies in the Field,”in Leonore Loeb Adler & Uwe P. Gielen, eds., Cross Cultural Topics in Psychology 25–40 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994). Observed differences might simply be due to factors such as national differences in the way the scales are understood or subtle differences in translations.Google Scholar

As Przeworski and Teune, Logic 119, note, the problem of equivalence is not unique to cross-cultural work. With respect to many questions, “establishing equivalence of measurement… is probably no more problematic for a study of Russians and Americans than for one of American whites and blacks.”Google Scholar

Several considerations cause us to be willing to give a substantive interpretation to the differences in corporate responsibility scores. First, of course, these scores are responses to a known stimulus: the vignettes. We and our collaborators invested considerable effort to ensure as much as possible that the vignettes would be understood similarly in each society. Second, as we discuss below in the text, we do not observe an overall pattern of lower means for Russian respondents on other responsibility variables. All responsibility variables (e. g., actor responsibility, co-worker responsibility, boss responsibility, corporate responsibility) shared the same basic structure and used the same 0–100 scale. If the Russian questions were subtly different in their meaning, or if Russians used the scale in a different way, we should have observed this in all the questions.Google Scholar

Third, we asked respondents in all countries to rate the seriousness of the consequences of what happened on a 0–100 scale. We were concerned that Russian respondents might view the pollution vignettes as involving less serious outcomes than would American respondents. Differences in attributions of responsibility might, therefore, be due to differences in perceived seriousness. We found, however, that on average Russian respondents assigned “seriousness” scores similar to respondents in the other two countries. Below are the means for each country for each story.Google Scholar

Of course, one could argue that the response to all these scales may be affected by the different ways they are used across societies. However, the existence of multiple common indicators replicated in each of the three cities allows us to look for differences in patterns of responses or patterns of relationships among more than one variable. Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice 120; Przeworski & Teune, Logic. Ultimately, the issue is whether a set of hypotheses are confirmed in a way that makes nonsubstantive explanations (e. g., problems with translations) implausible.Google Scholar

106 Gerlach, Alliance Capitalism (cited in note 6).Google Scholar

107 Valerie Hans, “Lay Judgments of Corporate Defendants” (presented at Law & Society Association annual meeting, Phoenix, Ariz., June 1994).Google Scholar

108 Hamilton & Sanders, Everyday Justice (cited in note 8).Google Scholar

109 Kelman & Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience (cited in note 3).Google Scholar

110 Clinard & Yeager, Corporate Crime 281 (cited in note 2).Google Scholar

111 Fisse & Braithwaite, Corporations, Crime 123 (cited in note 5).Google Scholar

112 Id. at 96; Hamilton & Sanders, “Responsibility & Risk” (cited in note 25).Google Scholar

113 Fisse & Braithwaite, Corporations, Crime 113.Google Scholar

114 Schlegel, Just Deserts 86 (cited in note 36).Google Scholar

115 The correlation between outcome seriousness and corporate actor responsibility ranges from 0.05 to 0.005 in our four stories. Outcome seriousness alone explains almost none of the variance in the corporate responsibility measure.Google Scholar

116 In this regard the Failure to Publicize story is intriguing. We intended to manipulate the boss's influence the same way in all four stories: in the authority version the orders were less specific. However, in this story the boss in the authority versions of the vignette was held more responsible than the boss in the subordinate versions. Differences in the way we manipulated the boss's influence in the various stories do not appear to account for this difference in attributions. In the subordinate versions the respondents were told, “Jim talks the problem over with his editor, and the editor tells him not to write a story about the waste because it might cause the factory to close and hurt the town's economy.” In the authority versions they were told, “The Editor-in-Chief has told Jim that he should not publish stories that might hurt the economy of the town.”Google Scholar

In a future report we plan to explore the possibility that the nature of the organization, whether it is professional or bureaucratic, may have helped to produce this result (Fisse & Braithwaite, Corporations, Crime 105–6; Blau, Peter, “The Hierarchy of Authority in Organizations,” 73 Am. J. Soc. 453 (1968).Google Scholar

117 Coleman, Foundations (cited in note 24).Google Scholar

118 French, Collective/Corporate Responsibility (cited in note 5).Google Scholar

119 T. Murase, “‘Sunao’: A Central Value in Japanese Psychotherapy,”in A. J. Marsella & G. M. White, eds., Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

120 Fisse & Braithwaite, Corporations, Crime 123 (cited in note 5).Google Scholar