ABSTRACT
The news media are attracted to corporate scandals because they are unusual and draw audience interest. Consider these headlines as examples: “Dog Deaths, Flushed Hamsters and Booted Peacocks: All the Airline Pet Scandals of 2018” (Dog, 2018) and “The 10 Biggest Business Scandals of 2017” (Shen, 2017). Business researchers typically refer to financial improprieties as scandals (Markham, 2015). While there is interest in corporate scandals, the area is rather vague and ill-defined. Moreover, there is less written about this topic than the many others to be found in this volume. The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the conceptualization of corporate scandal and to emphasize the corporate scandalization process.
