Scapegoating: How Organizations Assign Blame

Description

A large cruise ship sinks after hitting some outcropping rocks near the shore. Who is to blame? In the face of negative events - accidents, corporate scandals, crises and bankruptcies - there are two organizational strategies for managing blame. The first is to take full responsibility for the event and to implement adequate corrective measures. The second is to create one or more scapegoats by transferring blame to some of the people directly involved in the event. In this way, the organization can appear blameless and avoid costly remedial interventions. Reappraising the Costa Concordia shipwreck and other well-known cases, Catino analyzes the processes and mechanisms behind creating the 'organizational scapegoat.' In doing so, Catino highlights the limits of explanations centered on guilt and individual solutions to organizational problems, and underlines the need for a different civic epistemology.

Maurizio Catino is Professor of Sociology of Organizations in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Milan - Bicocca, Italy, and Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sociology at New York University. He is the author of Organizational Myopia. Problems of Rationality and Foresight in Organizations (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and Mafia Organizations. The Visible Hand of Criminal Enterprise (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He has also published in numerous journals, including Social Networks, Organization Studies, European Journal of Sociology, Crime and Justice.