Ambiguity, Uncoupling, and Autonomy: The Criminology of Organizational Middle-Management

The criminological study of corporate crime provides a source of insights into the key role of middle-managers in navigating the tensions between compliance-based and initiative-based approaches to safety. From an initial focus on individual and organizational motivations, the discipline has moved to highlight instead the influence of breakdowns in the connections between individual and organization. Three such grounds of disconnection (problems of ambiguity, structural uncoupling, and autonomy deficits) will be explored, and their implications for understandings of middle-managers’ role will be analyzed.