{"id":68140,"date":"2015-10-14T09:27:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T14:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68140"},"modified":"2015-10-13T13:41:53","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T18:41:53","slug":"bad-apples-or-bad-culture-explaining-volkswagens-malfeasance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/10\/14\/bad-apples-or-bad-culture-explaining-volkswagens-malfeasance\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad apples or bad culture? Explaining Volkswagen’s malfeasance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volkswagen\u2019s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, recently stepped down<\/a> from his post amid a scandal over manipulated emissions tests. Researchers at West Virginia University found that VW cars used \u201cdefeat devices\u201d to dodge emissions standards<\/a> set by the Environmental Protection Agency. To what extent is Winterkorn responsible for this corporate skullduggery? And does the usage of these devices constitute a \u201ccrime\u201d?<\/p>\n

Classic sociological theories\u00a0try to explain\u00a0corporate scandal\u00a0as a result of\u00a0an\u00a0amoral calculus<\/a><\/em>:\u00a0individual decision makers in\u00a0an organization weigh the costs and benefits of their actions without concern for whether they are ethical. One example is the Ford Pinto debacle<\/a>, when the company failed to recall Pintos with defective gas tanks because its \u201cinternal \u2018cost-benefit analysis\u2019\u201d indicated the financial costs of recalling outweighed the potential cost of human lives.<\/p>\n

In contrast to a model that emphasizes individuals, sociologists have shown\u00a0that risky decision making often stems from the normalization of deviance<\/a><\/em>\u00a0within an organization. Conforming to the culture of the organization, employees as a group often redefine deviant actions as normal or commonplace. In the Ford Pinto case, fuel tank ruptures were categorized as acceptable risk<\/a> due to prevailing safety priorities and long-standing industry norms.<\/p>\n

The Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster<\/a> serves as yet another example in which escalating levels of technical failure were redefined<\/a> as normal and acceptable. With the increased importance placed upon bureaucratic pressures, NASA\u2019s cultural understandings of risk acceptance, and high levels of organization secrecy, launching rockets with dangerous technical problems became routine and rule-abiding due to cultural understandings of risk acceptance.<\/p>\n

The media typically<\/a> draw on\u00a0the individualistic amoral calculus theory, framing\u00a0scandals as a result of a few\u00a0\u201cbad apples\u201d\u00a0while hiding the social context that shapes norms within organizations. Still, it’s quite possible that the people behind the\u00a0Volkswagen emission fraud will not be tried\u00a0as criminal. Our definitions of what is criminal reflect societal beliefs rather than the “objective” dangers and risks posed to us. As such, we tend to focus on the crimes of the poor<\/a>\u00a0and downplay those of elites and corporations<\/a>.\u00a0Volkswagen’s fudging of emission performance might be defined as \u201ccorporate non-compliance\u201d rather than “criminal.”<\/p>\n

Originally posted at There’s Research on That!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Ryan Larson and Amber Powell are graduate students studying the sociology of crime at the University of Minnesota. Larson’s\u00a0research interests extend to quantitative methodology\/statistics, sport, and media;\u00a0Powell’s to\u00a0victimization and the intersectionalities of race and gender. They both write for The Society Pages<\/a>.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volkswagen\u2019s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, recently stepped down from his post amid a scandal over manipulated emissions tests. Researchers at West Virginia University found that VW cars used \u201cdefeat devices\u201d to dodge emissions standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. To what extent is Winterkorn responsible for this corporate skullduggery? And does the usage of these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/10\/41.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68140"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68156,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68140\/revisions\/68156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}