Organizational Wrongdoing, Boundary Work, and Systems of Exclusion: The Case of the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal

Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksContributions to scientific reportsResearch

Authors

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.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOrganizational Wrongdoing as the "Foundational" Grand Challenge : Definitions and Antecedents
EditorsClaudia Gabbioneta, Marco Clemente, Royston Greenwood
Number of pages22
PublisherEmerald Publishing Limited
Publication date24.07.2023
Pages171-192
ISBN (print)978-1-83753-279-7
ISBN (electronic)978-1-83753-278-0
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24.07.2023
Externally publishedYes

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Flexibility of industrial material flow networks
  2. Much More Than Meets the Eye: Emotion Perception in Human-Robot Interaction
  3. Emotion Perception in Human-Robot Interaction
  4. Systemnahe Programmierung
  5. Temporal and spatial scaling impacts on extreme precipitation
  6. What is Social Learning?
  7. Introduction
  8. Atmospheric gas-particle partitioning versus gaseous/particle-bound deposition of SVOCs
  9. A panel cointegrating rank test with structural breaks and cross-sectional dependence
  10. Das Alltagsmedium Blatt
  11. Proprioceptive and sensorimotor performance in Parkinson's disease
  12. Die geometry influence on the texture and microstructure development during extrusion of AZ31 and ZK60 magnesium alloy chips
  13. Single, Double and Quadruple Maximum Power Point Trackers for a Stand-Alone Photovoltaic System
  14. Between Usability and Trustworthiness-The Potential of Information Transfer Using Digital Information Platforms for Refugees
  15. endo-Hydroxy-trioxa-tris-σ-homotropilidene
  16. Establishment success in a forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning experiment in subtropical China (BEF-China)
  17. Demographic Transition in Rural Areas: The Relationship between Public Services and Tourism Development
  18. Cultural Globalization between Myth and Reality
  19. Thermodynamic formulation of models for multiscale crystal plasticity at large deformation
  20. Using Large N Longitudinal Comparison to Explain Political Recruitment in Changing Democracies
  21. Structure matters
  22. The Trans-human Paradigm and the Meaning of Life
  23. The German Welfare System and the Continuity of Change
  24. Governance approaches to address scale issues in biodiversity management – current situation and ways forward
  25. An empirical agent-based model of consumer co-adoption of low-carbon technologies to inform energy policy
  26. Children's interpretation of ambiguous pronouns based on prior discourse
  27. The Contribution of Large Banking Institutions to Systemic Risk