Criminally Bad Management

Research Handbook on Corporate Crime and Financial Misdealing (J. Arlen ed. 2017)

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2017-39

35 Pages Posted: 8 May 2017

Date Written: May 3, 2017

Abstract

Because of their leverage over employees, corporate managers are prime targets for incentives to control corporate crime, even when managers do not themselves commit crimes. Moreover, the collective actions of corporate management — producing what is sometimes referred to as corporate culture — can be the cause of corporate crime, not just a locus of the failure to control it. Because civil liability and private compensation arrangements have limited effects on management behavior — and because the problem is, after all, crime — criminal law is often expected to intervene. This handbook chapter offers a functional explanation for corporate criminal liability: individual criminal liability cannot effectively address the relationship between senior managers and corporate crime but corporate criminal liability can, at least in part. Thus the practice of corporate criminal liability has grown and will continue to do so, at least in the absence of major restructuring of criminal law.

Suggested Citation

Buell, Samuel W., Criminally Bad Management (May 3, 2017). Research Handbook on Corporate Crime and Financial Misdealing (J. Arlen ed. 2017), Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2017-39, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2962607

Samuel W. Buell (Contact Author)

Duke University School of Law ( email )

210 Science Drive
Box 90362
Durham, NC 27708
United States
919-613-7193 (Phone)

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
137
Abstract Views
752
Rank
379,079
PlumX Metrics