dc.description.abstract | The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 purports to
move away from the identification doctrine, towards a genuinely organisational model of
corporate liability. There is a risk, however, that insistence upon the involvement of senior
management in corporate manslaughter will reduce the Act to doing no more than
aggregating individual misconduct. Such an approach would fail both to encompass the
culpability of the organisation as more than just a collection of individuals, and to offer an
effective tool for the prosecution of large organisations. I argue that the senior management
requirement should not be interpreted as focusing on individuals, but on the authoritative
systems of work that organisations impose upon their employees. Inherent in large
organisations is a corporate structure, determining the meaning and value of what
employees perceive and the boundaries and direction of their work. These structures
emerge from the involvement of senior managers, whose rank and role within organisations
enables them to contribute to the development of corporate structure. Through insistence
on the involvement of these corporate architects and surveyors, the 2007 Act may be seen
to emphasise the role of the organisation in corporate manslaughter, identifying truly
corporate culpability. | en_GB |