Organizations Gone Wild: The Causes, Processes, and Consequences of Organizational Misconduct

Although research on organizational misconduct has a long history and a recent increase in popularity, important questions are still unexplored. We review and critique research on misconduct with an emphasis on organizational causes. In addition to reviewing some active areas of research, we also examine less-trodden areas and make suggestions for their development. We find that the definition of misconduct is often implicit and the role of social-control agents in identifying misconduct has been neglected, suggesting a need for more rigor in how researchers define the boundary of misconduct and measure the labeling of misconduct. The spread of misconduct within and among organizations has also seen relatively little attention, as has the spread of the consequences of misconduct, suggesting a need to examine diffusion of misconduct. Finally, organizational misconduct has been an effective context for testing theories on themes such as motivation, control, power, labeling, and status, and will continue to be an important research topic for both its applied value and its theoretical import.