TY - CHAP

T1 - Organizational Wrongdoing, Boundary Work, and Systems of Exclusion

T2 - The Case of the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal

AU - Fey, Laura

AU - Amis, John

PY - 2023/7/24

Y1 - 2023/7/24

N2 - The Volkswagen (VW) emissions scandal was one of the largest examples of organizational wrongdoing in corporate history, costing the firm immense damage to its reputation and over $33 billion in fines, penalties, financial settlements, and buyback costs. In this paper, we draw on the concept of boundary work to provide insight into the causes of wrongdoing at VW. Supplementing other work on the scandal, we show how the ways in which boundaries became established in the organization resulted in an internal context that defined “in” and “out” groups, normalized certain behaviors, and limited communication across intraorganizational boundaries. This allowed wrongdoing to not only become established but also to go unchallenged. We provide contributions to broader understandings of organizational wrongdoing and to the temporal unfolding of boundary work by theorizing how a combination of cognitive, horizontal, and vertical boundaries can create an infrastructure of organizational design that permits organizational wrongdoing, prevents it being challenged, and ultimately normalizes it in everyday activities.

AB - The Volkswagen (VW) emissions scandal was one of the largest examples of organizational wrongdoing in corporate history, costing the firm immense damage to its reputation and over $33 billion in fines, penalties, financial settlements, and buyback costs. In this paper, we draw on the concept of boundary work to provide insight into the causes of wrongdoing at VW. Supplementing other work on the scandal, we show how the ways in which boundaries became established in the organization resulted in an internal context that defined “in” and “out” groups, normalized certain behaviors, and limited communication across intraorganizational boundaries. This allowed wrongdoing to not only become established but also to go unchallenged. We provide contributions to broader understandings of organizational wrongdoing and to the temporal unfolding of boundary work by theorizing how a combination of cognitive, horizontal, and vertical boundaries can create an infrastructure of organizational design that permits organizational wrongdoing, prevents it being challenged, and ultimately normalizes it in everyday activities.

KW - Entrepreneurship

KW - Wrongdoing

KW - broundary work

KW - cognitive boundaries

KW - organizational design

KW - volkswagen scandal

KW - dieselgate

KW - Management studies

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/219f1f74-6b81-307e-946c-59ac85ae9544/

U2 - 10.1108/s0733-558x20230000084009

DO - 10.1108/s0733-558x20230000084009

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-1-83753-279-7

T3 - Research in the Sociology of Organizations

SP - 171

EP - 192

BT - Organizational Wrongdoing as the "Foundational" Grand Challenge

A2 - Gabbioneta, Claudia

A2 - Clemente, Marco

A2 - Greenwood, Royston

PB - Emerald Publishing Limited

ER -