A social psychological basis of corruption and sociopathology

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the social psychological basis of pathologies, from which result neuroses and behaviours like corruption and sociopathic behaviour. It takes the perspective that social collectives have normative minds and can be explored in terms of their social psychological processes. Design/methodology/approach – Knowledge cybernetics will be used to show how pathologies can develop from the interconnection between such noumenal attributes as ideology and ethics. Findings – Social entities have similar psychological pathologies to individual ones. Piaget's notions of how the mind operates can be applied to corporate personality, and their inability to create and coordinate different perspectives can be seen as an organisational pathology. Research limitations/implications – The paper is a theoretical construct that explores corruption and sociopathology at a deep conceptual level. It requires elaboration through case examples to provide pragmatic meaning. Practical implications – The capacity to create a methodology that is able to explore the existence and development of pathologies. Originality/value – This is the first approach of this type using cybernetics to explore at a high conceptual focus the development of pathologies like corruption and sociopathic behaviour.