Theoretical Implications of the Volkswagen Diesel Software Scandal

• In Event: Understanding Corporate and Organizational Crime

Abstract

This paper examines the scandal surrounding Volkswagen’s employment of software in diesel-powered cars to evade standards for reducing smog.

Broadly speaking, two major understandings of organizational crime have emerged. Rational choice models emphasize calculated strategies that use unethical or illegal practices in order to further organizational goals. Organizational process models emphasize miscommunications, normalization of deviance, escalating commitments, and unintended consequences in their accounts of organizational crime. Organizational process models suggest that organizational crimes involve elements of organizational failure. However, this may be because organizational crimes that come to light often do so because of organizational failure.

The Volkswagen scandal is exceptional in that the deviant behavior was proceeding according to plan when it came to light. I draw on New York Times coverage to test whether a rational choice model or organizational process model best describes the scandal. Although conclusions must be preliminary inasmuch as the facts of the case are still coming to light, what is known so far suggests that rational choice better describes Volkswagen’s attempts to evade emissions standards.

Author

• Peter Shrock, Southeastern Louisiana University