The present study is an exploratory examination of the influence of social and organizational features on respondents’ attributions of responsibility for wrongdoing within an organization. Respondents read a vignette of organizational wrongdoing that included the manipulation of social features, such as whether the organizational actor was following orders or acting on his volition (social role) and if the actor tried to cover up his actions or not (deed), and organizational features, such as standard operating procedures (SOP) and institutionalized mental schemas. Following the vignette, respondents made attributional judgments to both the individual actor and organization based on a multidimensional measure of responsibility. Results indicated that the actor’s role within the organization, his actions or deeds, and organizational SOP significantly impacted how respondents attributed responsibility (on multiple dimensions) to either the individual or organization. Moreover, results indicated that women and men tended to attribute responsibility differently. Recommendations are made to improve future tests of the integrated model. 1. Introduction Research on attribution of responsibility (AR) for organizations and their employees has not mustered a great deal of scholarly attention recently, despite the increasing public attention on corporate/organizational wrongdoing. Although there has been more awareness of corporate/organizational wrongdoing, largely due to the subprime mortgage crisis, financial industry scandals, and reports of government abuse of power, there have been few discussions about the accountability for these untoward actions. The purpose of the present paper is twofold: (1) to test variables, based on Gailey and Lee’s [1] theoretical model, that are likely to influence people’s AR for organizational wrongdoing and (2) to obtain a clearer and more coherent picture of what happens when someone (e.g., a potential juror) is asked to assign responsibility to organizations and their agents, which is necessary to gain a better understanding of how organizations escape culpability. The study of how people attribute responsibility has its roots in the classical work of Fritz Heider [2]. Heider’s focus is largely on general liability for blame or punishment. The two issues that are vital theoretically for determining responsibility in his model are (1) the extent to which the actor intended, or caused, the effect and (2) the extent to which the action was caused by environmental forces or pressures. Heider argues that as responsibility to the
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