This chapter examines at a broad level the social construction of corporate harms. The psychological explanations of blame attribution are also addressed. In addition, the interaction between social construction, blame attribution, and legal causation is shown. It concludes with an assessment of the roles played by formal state institutions such as inquests and public inquiries in forging and responding to public awareness and fears of technological risk. The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster in 1987 and the Southall rail crash in 1997 are explained. Then, some of the formal manifestations...

This chapter examines at a broad level the social construction of corporate harms. The psychological explanations of blame attribution are also addressed. In addition, the interaction between social construction, blame attribution, and legal causation is shown. It concludes with an assessment of the roles played by formal state institutions such as inquests and public inquiries in forging and responding to public awareness and fears of technological risk. The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster in 1987 and the Southall rail crash in 1997 are explained. Then, some of the formal manifestations of the blaming process are presented. There has been an extraordinary increase in the attention given to corporate responsibility, both in the media and in scholarly literature, in the past few years.