Business Ethics, Law and Zemiology: The Criminology of Social and Environmental Harm

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 externalizing them.