In Search of Donald Campbell: Mix and Multimethods Braithwaite Corporate Crime Deterrence

Abstract

A comprehensive assessment of corporate crime deterrence is long overdue. Natalie Schell-Busey, Sally Simpson, Melissa Rorie, and Mariel Alper (2016, this issue) have been diligent and systematic with a tricky meta-analysis. Corporate crime scholars will be surprised at how many useful studies they have discovered on the effectiveness of corporate crime deterrence even if they have limits for most tests in the meta-analysis. In a domain like business regulatory research, high-quality empirical studies by government agencies around the world usually do not find their way into the academic literature. It is an underestimated service of meta-analyses like this to organize and display that data.

Within the considerable limitations of the systematic data available, the conclusions reached by Schell-Busey et al. (2016) are credible. This policy essay will contend that they become even more persuasive if criminologists think laterally about studies not included that are arguably relevant to the inferences at issue. Donald Campbell shines as a light on the hill guiding how such lateral moves might improve the science.