Bridging the Disciplines: The Need for Interdisciplinarity in Organizational Misbehavior Research

• In Event: White-Collar Crime at 75: Research, Theory and Policy I

Abstract

Organizational misbehavior (OMB) is defined as all unethical and unwanted behavior in organizations performed by its members and management. This can vary from harassment and bullying to fraud and corruption in the broadest meaning.
Academic interest in the topic is scattered over the disciplines focusing on different aspects of the topic. Public administration mainly focused on policies, lending ideas from the leadership and management field while (organizational) criminology had its focus merely on the causes of undesired behavior. All disciplines are involved in their own research applying its own vocabulary and publishing in its own journals. A lot of knowledge, but very little cooperation let alone integration.
In this paper a short overview of the literature with respect to ethical violations and OMB from the fields of – inter alia – criminology, public administration, organizational science, human resource management, history, and psychology will be presented showing that many disciplines are approaching the topic from their own point of view and that combining them can contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon. The conclusion is that we are in need of an integrated theory, comprising elements of all the fields.

Author

• Emile Kolthoff, Open University Netherlands