Interdisciplinary cooperation of sociologists, criminologists, law scholars, political scientists and economists, as well as medical scientists and sinologists is at the heart of the research program “Organizational Crime Studies”. It utilizes a cross-sectoral and cross-cultural comparative approach in order to explore why and how organizations “stray off legal paths” and how they can get back on track. In addition to analyzing societal and institutional factors to explain organizational wrongdoing, we also examine its legal implications, in order to offer insights from an organizational sociology perspective that are useful for criminology, criminal law and international corruption studies. Specifically, the rather new concept of “organizational deviance” can serve as a starting point to explain a certain under-researched form of crime which is determined by the aims of the organization, while personal gain plays a minor role.
This research program focuses on the impact of globalization on corporations, and especially on industrial companies. According to a common thread in mainstream globalization literature, the number of transnational corporations is increasing, which in trun drives the emergence of a managerial “world class” or “global elites”. Allegedly, these elites push forward the neoliberal transformation of the world economy. This hypothesis culminates in the idea of a “new spirit of capitalism”. The Management Organization Careers research program puts the thesis of a global economic elite to the test, by examining the empirical career patterns and action orientations of top managers, who lead the big industrial corporations of the world’s largest economies today.
Research within this program analyzes the field of medical organizations, such as hospitals, which has been undergoing substantial changes in recent decades. In addition to a focus on Germany, the research projects inlcude an international comparative perspective. How do these processes of organizational change affect the organizations, the medical profession, the medical staff including their working conditions and career paths, and the provision of care to patients? The research program, which builds upon the insights of heiGOS' organizational and management studies, has evolved from its precursor “Hospital Management Studies”, which concucted comparative research covering Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), Asia (Japan, South Korea) and South America (Brazil).
✎ Elizangela Valarini, Markus Pohlmann & Subrata Mitra (Hrsg., 2021): Political Corruption and Organizational Crime. The Grey Fringes of Democracy and the Private Economy
✎ Sebastian Starystach & Kristina Höly (Hrsg., 2021): The Silence of Organizations: How Organizations Cover up Wrongdoings
