Business ethics, law and zemiology: The criminology of social and environmental harm

Robin Klimecki and Martin Parker

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 2025, vol. 34, issue 4, 1886-1896

Abstract: This speculative paper introduces zemiology, an extension of radical criminology which explores why many ‘crimes’ are not ‘illegal’ by focussing on the problem of ‘social harm’. Zemiology insists that we should begin with social or environmental problems, and not allow their foreclosure by the distraction of whether a particular practice is legal or illegal, or defined as ethical or unethical. We argue that business ethics might learn from zemiology's attempt to radicalise criminology, particularly in terms of thinking about forms of procedural or restorative justice that might encourage corporations to claim responsibility for systemic harms rather than externalising them.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12742

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:buseth:v:34:y:2025:i:4:p:1886-1896

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().