Do Women and Men Differ in Their Neutralizations of Corporate Crime?

Abstract

Neutralization theory has commonly been used to understand the motivations of street offending, and recent studies have examined the use of neutralization techniques by corporate and white-collar offenders to account for their crimes. However, few researchers have explored whether this process is gendered. Using data from master of business administration (MBA) students, this study examines how gender influences intentions to inhibit or promote the sale of Panalba, a hypothetical pharmaceutical drug known to harm people, as well as how gender moderates the relationship between techniques of neutralization and corporate offending decisions. Results show that while there are bivariate gender differences in corporate offending decisions and in some of the techniques of neutralization, there are few gender differences in the effect of techniques of neutralization on corporate offending decisions. Directions for future research are highlighted.

It’s common sense, stupid! Corporate crime and techniques of neutralization in the automobile industry

“…Indeed, a small body of research emerged in the 1980s to develop the concept of techniques of neutralization to corporate wrongdoing: the illegitimate activities that corporation engages in [12,13,14]. More recently there has been a resurgence of research that has applied this basic approach to corporate wrongdoing ( [15,16,17]; and [18]). This work uses precisely the same framework set out by Sykes and Matza and followed by Cohen (though remarkably, Cohen refers to none of this work on corporate denial in his work on state denial; 1993 and 2001).…”

Doing business for a “higher loyalty”? How Swedish transnational corporations neutralise allegations of crime

“…There are however a number of criminological studies that are of relevance to the current research. A number of scholars have studied how individuals employ different types of neutralisation techniques in order to motivate white-collar crime [20,21]. These studies differ from the current paper however, in that they focus on processes associated with the individual offender.…”

Variability in Moral Disengagement and Its Relation to Offending in a Sample of Serious Youthful Offenders

“…Finally, it should also be noted that much of the sex differences may be due to the measure of MD more generally. Research on the neutralizations reported by offenders suggests that men and women differ in the extent that they neutralize (which is supported here) and in the specific excuses that they provide (Klenowski et al, 2011;Vieraitis, Piquero, Piquero, Tibbetts, & Blankenship, 2012). It is possible that our MD scale is weighted toward those MDs most often used by men.…”