Collaborative Research on Global Corporate Structures and Attributions of Responsibility and Wrongdoing

现代社会中许多最严重的恶行不是由个人谋取私利，而是由服从权威命令的组织成员犯下的。这些行为有时被称为“服从罪”，在全球范围内似乎是官僚作风滋长的结果。虽然我们推测，在组织内部，对于责任、公司犯罪以及面对这种不当行为应该做些什么，存在着不同的、甚至是不断变化的概念，但人们对这些态度和导致问责的条件知之甚少。汉密尔顿和桑德斯正在进行的这项研究直接研究了这些问题。这项研究探索了全球公司形式的分散如何影响组织中对不当行为的责任和制裁。三种不同的文化，美国、日本和苏联，代表着截然不同的法律和经济环境(显著的资本主义、企业资本主义和社会主义)，是评估不同组织形式对个人行为影响的场所。基于调查设计，根据组织结构的关键特征系统地改变小插曲，这项研究考察了个人和公司责任的认知是独立的事情，但在三个不同的经济制度的背景下。这种设计允许隔离政治、经济和文化影响，以及组织中全球变化对责任归属、对错误行为的看法和对社会控制的态度的影响。这项研究具有相当大的潜力，不仅可以产生关于归因理论的重要知识，还可以产生关于跨国背景下的组织遵从性、监管和社会控制的重要知识。

Many of the most serious misdeeds in modern societies are committed not by individuals acting for personal gain, but by members of organizations obeying orders from authority. These acts are sometimes called "crimes of obedience" and globally seem to be a consequence of the growth of bureaucracy. While we surmise that within organizations there are differing and even changing conceptions of responsibility, corporate crime, and what should be done in the face of such wrongdoing, there is little known about these attitudes and the conditions that lead to accountability. The study being undertaken by Hamilton and Sanders directly examines such issues. The research explores how responsibility and sanctions for wrongdoing in organizations are affected by the global dispersal of corporate forms. Three different cultures, U.S., Japanese, and Soviet, representing contrasting legal and economic environments (marked capitalism, corporate capitalism, and socialism) are the sites for assessing the impact of different organizational forms on individual behavior. Based on a survey design that systematically varies vignettes according to key characteristics of organizational structure, the study examines perceptions of individual and corporate responsibility as separate matters, yet within the context of three contrasting economic systems. This design allows for the isolation of political, economic, and cultural influences and the effects of global changes in organizations on attributions of responsibility, perceptions of wrongdoing, and attitudes toward social control. The research has considerable potential to yield important knowledge not only about attribution theories but also about organizational compliance, regulation, and social control in a transnational context.