Normalized wrongdoing – the notion that wrongdoing is considered a normal, legitimate behavior by a group or an organization – is maintained through mechanisms, structures and processes that are often viewed as rightdoing. While wrongdoing scholarship has examined how deviant behaviour or corruption has been normalized in certain settings, extant literature has not yet unpacked how corporate scams may be societally normalized, where legal penalties or reputation-based implications have little to no impact on structures and processes that are viewed as rightdoing by corporations. This article explores corporate scams as normalized wrongdoing that exploits extant institutional arrangement for persistent, value-extracting wrongdoing. In this article we argue there are three core mechanisms: organizational sludge, consumer and organizational atomization and monopolized spaces. Through these mechanistic processes, corporations are able to construct, trick, maintain and profit from dishonest behaviour that disempowers consumers and citizens.
