The organizational reasons for wrongdoing. The case of Italy ’s Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM)

This article aims at analyzing the organizational reasons for wrongdoing in the CSM affair, a scandal that shed light on the deviant pract ices for career paths within the Italian judiciary system. By relying on documents and several semi-structured interviews to judges, public prosecutors, and experts in the field, we reconstructed actual practices for career advancement (extra-legal governance) and compared them with formal policies (legal governance). Our analysis shows that deviant practices were not merely occasional episodes of favoritism, but were part of an extra-legal governance system that involved virtually all of Italy’s judges. We also found that the CSM decoupled formal policies from actual practices to manage two organizational trade-offs – bureaucratic rules vs. efficiency, and independence vs. accountability. Therefore, besides individual gain, actors had two major “organizational reasons” for wrongdoing: first, they needed to cope with a lack of organizational capabilities and resources; second, th ey needed to address calls for greater accountability. In the light of our findings, we conclude with some considerations about organizational learning and the relation between law, organizations, and wrongdoing.
Source: Crime, Law and Social Change - Category: Criminology Source Type: research