Industry coalitions punish and discipline wayward member firms back into conformity

Evidence

Behaving in ways that displease the gun industry is not only politically risky, especially in southern and midwestern states, but it can be financially costly as well. Smith & Wesson agreed to set restrictions on how dealers sold its handguns. The NRA denounced the firm as capitulators. The nation’s largest gun wholesalers refused to distribute Smith & Wesson guns. Some shooting-match organizers told the firm to stay away from their events. … The company was vilified in Internet chat rooms, ostracized within the gun industry, and promptly terminated as a client by a law firm representing other gun manufacturers (Butterfield & Hernandez, 2000). These concerted punitive actions had the semblance of antitrust activity. A spokesman for the company had this to say about the pummeling: “We’ve been getting beat up pretty bad, and the whole idea seems to be a boycott of Smith & Wesson products.” The chastisement brought the wayward company back in line. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1118

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reputation-boycott enforcement mechanisms documented in Milgrom’s law-merchant literature and the diamond-bourse extralegal discipline in the vault; industry self-policing shapes behavior more powerfully than formal law in both settings.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1118