Rethinking organizational crime and organizational criminology

Organizational crime and organizational criminology, obviously, are, or sho uld be about "organization''. This essay wants to explore what is going on in contemporary "organizations''; it wants to think through what is current ly happening in today's organizations. It will argue that contemporary orga nizational life has arrived in a phase of transition. New forms, and new mo dalities of organizational morality are taking shape. So is organizational regulation. This, as will hopefully become clear, is of importance to organ izational criminologists who, inevitably, though often implicitly, have bee n researching and writing about organizational or business ethics and moral ity for some time now. This essay suggests an alternative way of conceptual izing life and regulation in contemporary organizations. It suggests a read ing of contemporary organizations as clusters of labyrinthine networks - i. e. the raw materials and again the outcome of labyrinthine moralities - in which - as Deleuze and Guattari had it - the Outside is always already pote ntially, though undecidably, Within. To students of organizational regulati on, and organizational criminologists are amongst them, this essay argues t hat contemporary organizations are gradually turning into highly complex ne tworks (of networks) that are often inextricably interwoven with surroundin g networks. This has a profound impact on how organizational moralities eme rge and develop, on on how these in turn impact on the contents and the ori entation of organizational action. This essay will argue that regulating co ntemporary organizatons is bound to be simultaneously much easier as well a s much more complex than in a previous, "bureaucratic'' age.