Title:  Regulatory territories and general deterrence across borders: Swiss banks’ territorial self-categorizations and responses to U.S. Criminal prosecutions

Type: Talk with Q&A

Language: English

Facilitator: Florian ÜBERBACHER
 

Abstract. We conduct an interpretive, qualitative study investigating under which conditions a foreign nation-al regulator’s prosecutions of domestic organizations have a cross-border general deterrence effect, preventing not only the prosecuted but also the nonprosecuted domestic organizations (observers) from violating foreign national law. Our findings led us to reconceptualize regulatory territory, the scope of space of a regulator’s legal authority. We argue that it is neither necessarily geographically defined by state borders (as extant criminal deterrence research presumes) nor does it depend solely on regulators’ territory claims over a variable scope of space, but rather on what we refer to as observers’ territorial self-categorization – an interpretive process which leads observers to conclude whether they are located inside what they perceive to be a regulator’s territory (or not). Territorial self-categorization is critical for explaining cross-border general deterrence, hence, whether observers perceive a high prosecution threat from the foreign regulator and become compliant with foreign law. Further, territorial self-categorization and cross-border general deterrence are culturally embed-ded processes that are shaped by observers’ taken-for-granted scripts about which regulator has ultimate legal authority. Together, our study contributes to research on the global legal environment of organizations, criminal deterrence, and organizational self-categorization.

Speaker. Florian Überbacher is a Senior Researcher ("Oberassistent") at University of Zurich. He will join Montpellier Business School as Associate Professor in Management in 2021. He received a Ph.D. in management from the University of St. Gallen. His research focuses on the role of power and influence in institutional environments. Substantively, he is interested in business-government-relations and business regulation, particularly in the context of globalization, international business, and multinational companies. He has published in such journals as Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization Studies.