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Edelman, Lauren B.; Talesh, Shauhin A. --- "To Comply or Not to Comply – That Isn’t the Question: How Organizations Construct the Meaning of Compliance" [2011] ELECD 935; in Parker, Christine; Nielsen, Lehmann Vibeke (eds), "Explaining Compliance" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Explaining Compliance

Editor(s): Parker, Christine; Nielsen, Lehmann Vibeke

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848448858

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: To Comply or Not to Comply – That Isn’t the Question: How Organizations Construct the Meaning of Compliance

Author(s): Edelman, Lauren B.; Talesh, Shauhin A.

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

5. To comply or not to comply ­ that
isn't the question: how organizations
construct the meaning of compliance
Lauren B. Edelman and Shauhin A. Talesh*

INTRODUCTION

Most analyses of business compliance with legal regulation view law as
exogenous to organizations; that is, they assume that law is formulated
and defined outside of organizations and prior to reaching organizational
domains. Furthermore, the extant literature tends to focus on organiza-
tions' strategic motivations for complying or not complying (Simpson,
1992, 1998; Vaughan, 1998), social and legal license pressures (Kagan
and Scholz, 1984; Kagan et al., 2003) or moral value laden concerns
(Tyler, 1990).
In contrast we argue that the nature of organizational compliance is
best illustrated not by a compliance versus noncompliance dichotomy,
but rather by a processual model in which organizations construct the
meaning of both compliance and law. Further we argue that organiza-
tions must be understood as social actors that are influenced by widely
institutionalized beliefs about legality, morality and rationality. We show
how institutionalized conceptions of law and compliance first become
widely accepted within the business community and eventually ­ as these
conceptions become widely institutionalized ­ come to be seen as rational
and legitimate by public legal actors and institutions and thus influence the
very meaning of law.
We begin by articulating a theoretical framework for understanding
compliance as a process and by specifying the institutional and political
mechanisms through which organizations shape the content and meaning
of law. We then discuss empirical work in the civil rights ...