Bad Business Practice

The late Christopher Harding, formerly Emeritus Professor of Law, Department of Law and Criminology, Aberystwyth University and Alison Cronin, Principal Academic in Law, Department of Humanities and Law, Bournemouth University, UK

• Contents: Preface Introduction to Bad Business Practice: towards a jurisprudence of business malpractice, delinquency and criminality PART I THE CHALLENGES FOR REGIMES OF LEGAL CONTROL 1. Clever or bad? Mapping the legal terrain of business delinquency and collusion 2. In search of a normative theory: the missing jurisprudence 3. From entrepreneur to malefactor: economic ideologies and theories of trading 4. Heroes and villains: an investigation into perpetration and victimhood and the relation between action and harm PART II THE EMERGENCE OF REGULATION AS A MODEL OF CONTROL 5. Regulation and enforcement: the panopticon industry 6. Regulated self-regulation: the new middle way 7. Regulation in theory: challenging the underlying assumptions PART III RECONFIGURING RESPONSIBILITY: THE ROLE OF THE STATE, CORPORATE ACTORS AND CIVIL SOCIETY 8. The moral economy of trade and business: bad business behaviour as systemic malaise Postscript: a final word – don’t shoot the piano player Index

'Christopher Harding and Alison Cronin’s Bad Business Practice pulls off the rare feat of combining an incisive theoretical analysis of the “economic and cultural pathologies” underlying corporate delinquency with a close-up, time- and context-sensitive critique of the criminal, regulatory and self-regulatory responses to these truly profound malaises. It is a brave book that dares to question the continued legitimacy of homo economicus who is still taken for granted in most critiques of the corporation in the 21st century.’