Professor Doreen McBarnet

Professor of Socio-Legal Studies

Contact details
doreen.mcbarnet@csls.ox.ac.uk
(01865) (2)84220

Doreen McBarnet is a sociologist working primarily in the area of business regulation. Her most recent research has focussed on corporate responsibility and the law, and on issues in legal work.

She has been a long time member of the Centre and fellow of Wolfson College, having, prior to that, been lecturer in sociology at Glasgow University, where she graduated with an MA hons in History and Sociology, and PhD in the Sociology of Law. Her main research interest for many years now has been business, regulation, governance, compliance, and ‘whiter than white collar crime’ particularly in the context of corporate finance, tax avoidance, corporate governance, creative accounting, business and professional ethics and corporate responsibility.

She has published widely in academic and professional journals, presented papers in many countries including UK, US, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, to academic, regulatory and business audiences, been an academic visitor at universities in the UK, US, Australia and Canada, and Adjunct Professor at Australian National University. She has also served on numerous international editorial boards, contributed to public consultations, committees and debate on tax avoidance, accounting, corporate governance and corporate responsibility in the UK, US, European Union and Australia. She has received research funding from the UK, European Union, US and Australia, including a first round ESRC Professorial Fellowship in 2003. She has also been awarded the CBE for services to social science.

Core research interests

Business regulation and governance
Business practice and compliance
Legal work
Business and professional ethics
Corporate governance and corporate responsibility

Selected publications

Books

The New Corporate Accountability: corporate social responsibility and the law (edited with A Voiculescu and T Campbell, Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Crime, compliance and control (Ashgate, 2004)

Creative accounting and the cross-eyed javelin thrower (Wiley 1999, with C. Whelan)

Law and Capital, (editor) Special Issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Academic Press, 1984

Conviction (Macmillan, 1981, paperback 1983)

Selected recent articles/chapters

‘Compliance, ethics and responsibility: emergent governance strategies in the US and UK’ in J O’Brien (ed) The Dynamics of Capital Market Governance, Imperial College Press, 2007

‘After Enron: will whiter than white collar crime still wash?’, British Journal of Criminology, vol 46 issue 6 2006

‘After Enron: corporate governance, creative compliance and the uses of Corporate Social Responsibility’, in J O’Brien (ed), Governing the Corporation, John Wiley, 2005, 205-222

‘When compliance is not the solution but the problem: from changes in law to changes in attitude’, in V Braithwaite (ed) Taxing Democracy, Ashgate, 2003

‘Transnational transactions: legal work, cross-border commerce and global regulation’, in M Likosky (ed) Transnational legal processes, Butterworths/North Western, 2002

Selected earlier articles/chapters

‘It’s not what you do but the way that you do it: tax evasion, tax avoidance and the boundaries of deviance’, in D Downes (ed), Unravelling criminal justice, MacMillan, 1992, pp 247-268

‘Whiter than white collar crime: tax, fraud insurance and the management of stigma’, British Journal of Sociology, Sept 1991, pp 323-344

‘The elusive spirit of the law: formalism and the struggle for legal control’, Modern Law Review November 1991, pp 848-873, (McBarnet and Whelan)

‘Law, policy and legal avoidance’, in Journal of Law and Society, Spring 1988, pp 113-121