Supplied by food businesses, foods could have huge effects on the health of a wide range of consumers, who take in them. For this reason, the work-related deviate behavior of food-business employees may cause extensive and severe health damage. Nevertheless, there are few studies relevant to the issue in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to reveal mechanism of generating deviance of food-business, through a case study of the mass food poisoning caused by the dairy processor on the basis of white-collar crime theory.
I designed a model of the white-collar crime generating mechanism, which focuses on basic requirement of crime (motive, justification, and opportunity), organizational culture, trade subculture, and interaction among these factors. The article analyzed data from the decision and the investigative document of the Public Prosecutor's Office with the model, and obtained the following results.
First, some deviances involve the motive (fear of failure) and justification, which are characteristic of white-collar crimes and which correspond to the above-mentioned model. Second, the leader of a plant, where the deviances occurred, had had a past experience of failure, which amplified his fear of failure at the incident. Third, it was suggested that the leader's fear would have promoted appearance of the plant's organizational culture which gave priority to cost reduction over product safety. However, I did not verify that the organizational culture existed in the third point. Additionally, the case included a particular type of deviance which the model cannot explain, which needs to be modified. These issues remain to be solved.
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