IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/scaman/v31y2015i4p536-548.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mafia rules. The role of criminal codes in mafia organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Catino, Maurizio

Abstract

How can organizations that lack mechanisms of legal dispute resolution and cannot create binding contracts work efficiently? They establish and enforce organizational rules. Rules are an essential aspect in the life of any organization, and they are even more important for criminal organizations because they serve to regulate interaction among dishonest people. Using a wide range of sources, this article analyzes the role of rules in mafias, in particular in the Sicilian “Cosa Nostra” and the American “La Cosa Nostra”. The main contribution of this paper is to unveil the organizational rationality of mafia rules. Through a comprehensive analysis of the few written, and several unwritten rules, I find that rules in mafias serve three main goals: (1) to ensure organization, coordination, and cooperation among members; (2) to settle conflicts and contain violence; and (3) to maintain secrecy and conceal information.

Suggested Citation

  • Catino, Maurizio, 2015. "Mafia rules. The role of criminal codes in mafia organizations," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 536-548.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:scaman:v:31:y:2015:i:4:p:536-548
    DOI: 10.1016/j.scaman.2015.10.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956522115000652
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.scaman.2015.10.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Crawford, Sue E. S. & Ostrom, Elinor, 1995. "A Grammar of Institutions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(3), pages 582-600, September.
    2. Markus C. Becker, 2004. "Organizational routines: a review of the literature," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 13(4), pages 643-678, August.
    3. Gino Cattani & Roger L. M. Dunbar & Zur Shapira, 2013. "Value Creation and Knowledge Loss: The Case of Cremonese Stringed Instruments," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 813-830, June.
    4. Skarbek, David, 2012. "Prison gangs, norms, and organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 96-109.
    5. Peter T. Leeson & David B. Skarbek, 2010. "Criminal constitutions," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 279-297, August.
    6. Michael D. Cohen & Paul Bacdayan, 1994. "Organizational Routines Are Stored as Procedural Memory: Evidence from a Laboratory Study," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(4), pages 554-568, November.
    7. Paolo Campana & Federico Varese, 2013. "Cooperation in criminal organizations: Kinship and violence as credible commitments," Rationality and Society, , vol. 25(3), pages 263-289, August.
    8. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, 2008. "The Concept of a Routine," Chapters, in: Markus C. Becker (ed.), Handbook of Organizational Routines, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Martha S. Feldman, 2000. "Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(6), pages 611-629, December.
    10. Brian T. Pentland & Martha S. Feldman, 2005. "Organizational routines as a unit of analysis," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 14(5), pages 793-815, October.
    11. Bicchieri,Cristina, 2006. "The Grammar of Society," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521574907.
    12. Stringham, Edward Peter, 2015. "Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199365166.
    13. Skarbek, David, 2011. "Governance and Prison Gangs," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 702-716, November.
    14. Elster, Jon, 1989. "Social Norms and Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 99-117, Fall.
    15. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ken Yahagi, 2019. "Law enforcement with criminal organizations and endogenous collaboration," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 351-363, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Freire, Danilo, 2017. "Prison Gangs," SocArXiv kuqqx, Center for Open Science.
    2. Gilstrap, J. Bruce & Hart, Timothy A., 2020. "How employee behaviors effect organizational change and stability," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 120-131.
    3. Mickaël David & Frantz Rowe, 2015. "Enterprise Systems Contribution to Organizational Routines Evolution Potential [Le rôle des systèmes d’information d’entreprise dans l’évolutivité des routines organisationnelles]," Post-Print hal-01559512, HAL.
    4. David Skarbek & Peng Wang, 2015. "Criminal rituals," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 288-305, October.
    5. Scott F. Turner & Violina Rindova, 2012. "A Balancing Act: How Organizations Pursue Consistency in Routine Functioning in the Face of Ongoing Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 24-46, February.
    6. Paul Peigné, 2013. "Routines during an organizational change: a study on dynamics and its effects," Post-Print hal-00876163, HAL.
    7. Darcy W E Allen, 2020. "When Entrepreneurs Meet:The Collective Governance of New Ideas," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number q0269.
    8. Andrea Furlan & Roberto Grandinetti, 2018. "Can routines be inherited? A microfoundational approach to spinoffs," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0217, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    9. Rustam Romaniuc & Katherine Farrow & Lisette Ibanez & Alain Marciano, 2016. "The perils of government enforcement," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 161-182, January.
    10. Palagashvili,Liya & Piano,Ennio & Skarbek,David, 2017. "The Decline and Rise of Institutions," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781316649176.
    11. Rodrigo Canales, 2011. "Rule bending, sociological citizenship, and organizational contestation in microfinance," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(1), pages 90-117, March.
    12. Dehua Gao & Aliakbar Akbaritabar, 2022. "Using agent-based modeling in routine dynamics research: a quantitative and content analysis of literature," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 521-550, February.
    13. Matthias Brauer & Tomi Laamanen, 2014. "Workforce Downsizing and Firm Performance: An Organizational Routine Perspective," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(8), pages 1311-1333, December.
    14. Paul Spee & Paula Jarzabkowski & Michael Smets, 2016. "The Influence of Routine Interdependence and Skillful Accomplishment on the Coordination of Standardizing and Customizing," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(3), pages 759-781, June.
    15. Luciano Ferreira Silva & Arnoldo José Hoyos Guevara & Ernesto D. R. Santibanez Gonzalez & Paulo Sergio Gonçalves Oliveira, 2019. "Evolution toward environment sustainable behavior: search for survival in the plastic industry in Brazil," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 1291-1320, June.
    16. Giada Baldessarelli & Nathalie Lazaric & Michele Pezzoni, 2022. "Organizational routines: Evolution in the research landscape of two core communities," Post-Print halshs-03718851, HAL.
    17. Gopesh Anand & John Gray & Enno Siemsen, 2012. "Decay, Shock, and Renewal: Operational Routines and Process Entropy in the Pharmaceutical Industry," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(6), pages 1700-1716, December.
    18. Peter Leeson, 2014. "Pirates, prisoners, and preliterates: anarchic context and the private enforcement of law," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 365-379, June.
    19. Bénédicte Reynaud, 2005. "The void at the heart of rules: Routines in the context of rule-following," PSE Working Papers halshs-00590855, HAL.
    20. Golz, Michael & D'Amico, Daniel J., 2018. "Market concentration in the international drug trade," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 28-42.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:scaman:v:31:y:2015:i:4:p:536-548. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/872/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.