Etica y Crimen

Crime, Law & Social Change 40: 323–347, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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The imaginary of ethical business practice Contributions to an unobtrusive criminology of organisation
RONNIE LIPPENS
Department of Criminology, Keele University, UK (e-mail: r.lippens@crim.keele.ac.uk) Abstract. This essay aims to contribute to an unobtrusive criminology oforganisation. In particular its focus is on organisational imaginaries of ethical business practice. The essay thus is about organisational imageries and imagination, as well as about the connections between those and what might roughly be called organisational justice. This essay tries to find out whether the imaginary of specific organisations holds come clues as to the boundaries (of imagination)within which textual or practical forms of organisational justice may take shape. This essay is part of a broader, though fairly recent research agenda that deals with the role and impact of imagination in organisational life.

Introduction: Towards an unobtrusive criminology of organisation Organisational criminologists often get interested in particular organisations, or in organisational lifein general, only when some spectacular case of lawbreaking has splashed on front pages of newspapers. Reading or watching media coverage, many organisational criminologists would then delve into the case. Evoking theories of crime and theories of organisational crime, they would then try and make sense of what they have read or what they have watched about this or that particular case oforganisational law-breaking. Sometimes they would go so far as to refute or endorse a particular theory, or set of theories, using the information they have managed to gather on the particular case. Although this surely is a very useful way of practising organisational criminology, I would like to suggest here that a considerable and important portion of organisational life, as it were, tends to elude theorganisational criminologist’s gaze. What about organisations when they are before, or in-between, spectacularly covered offences ? What about organisational life as it flows day in, day out, out of sight, in everyday settings and contexts ? What about organisational life as such, and the everyday organisational forms and desires through which it emerges and develops ? What about everydayorganisational life ? What about the usual business, that which does not splash onto front pages ? What about organisational life next door, in company X, where uncle Bob is a foreman ? What about the plant of company Y, down the road, where Mrs Sullivan is head of the Human Resources

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Department ? How do people at company X and company Y think about good business practice ?What is their vision of ethical or lawful business ? What do they say about business ethics and ethical behaviour ? How do they imagine ethical business practice ? Organisational criminologists don’t ask questions like these very often. It would of course be very hard to find answers to such questions when company X or company Y appears on a television screen as yet another “case” of corporate crime,and this is precisely the moment when so many organisational criminologists’ attention gets (rather belatedly, in my view) attracted. One could think of many reasons why organisational criminologists tend to get interested in organisations only when a particular (and often spectacular) case of corporate crime appears in newspapers or newsreels. One of those reasons might be that organisationalcriminologists are much more interested in spectacular forms of corporate “crime” and much less in how organisations as such emerge and develop in and through forms, rules, norms or cultures. Put in other words, organisational criminologists tend to emphasize the word crime in the phrase organisational criminology. Another reason may be of a more practical nature. It is very hard to do research in...