Dealing with the mafia: Stop
that racket, Oct 27th 2014,
14:33 by B.R.
THE protection
racket was one of the first businesses the Sicilian mafia entered into. Mafiosi
have shaken down firms, large and small, on the island for over 150 years. In
the 1990s it is thought that 90% of business owners paid a “pizzo”—slang
for beak, as in “wet your beak”—to keep hoodlums from their doors. The custom
is so entrenched that many people assume it to be intractable.
Some brave
figureheads have attempted to rally businessmen to take a principled stand
against the crime syndicates. Yet when such heroes arrive, they can
end up fighting an unwinnable war on two fronts. They must not only be wary of
mafiosi with guns, but also the wrath of other merchants, for whom paying up
has simply become a habit built up over decades.
A new paper by
Guido Palazzo of the University of Lausanne and Antonino Vaccaro of IESE
Business School, to be published in the Academy of Management Journal
next year, opens with the tale of one such man who found himself pincered.
Libro Grassi was a clothing-factory owner who publicly refused to pay
protection money in the late 1990s. He was eventually gunned down for his
principles, but not before being ostracised by his peers, who accused him of
tarnishing the image of Sicily.
Mr Palazzo
argues that societies dominated by organised crime are remarkably resistant to
change. “Many Sicilians consider paying protection money to the mafia perfectly
legitimate,” he writes. “Libero Grassi found no support among his peers because
his decision to challenge the practice publicly was perceived as inappropriate
in his social context.” Yet, as the paper goes on to explore, in the past
few years there has been a remarkably successful campaign against the pizzo.
It has succeeded, say the authors, precisely because it did not have such a
figurehead to drive it.
In 2004 a group
of seven students who were hoping to open a open a small business in Palermo,
the Sicilian capital, got frustrated with the mafia’s meddling. One night, they
anonymously plastered the walls of the town with hundreds of posters which
read, simply: “A society that pays the Pizzo is a society without
dignity.” Although the protagonists were naturally keen not to identify themselves,
they captured the island’s imagination. So, as a next step, they launched a
campaign called “Addiopizzo”, or “Goodbye pizzo”. Rather than try
to convince resistant business owners to change their behaviour, they persuaded
3,500 ordinary citizens to sign a declaration saying they would buy goods from
shops which did not pay the mafia. Thus emboldened, they presented the list to
a local newspaper.
Once they had
proven that there was a commercial benefit in refusing to pay a pizzo,
the students moved on to the shop owners themselves. In secret, one-on-one
meetings they encouraged individual merchants to sign up to Addiopizzo. Those
that agreed were given a banner that could be placed in shop windows
telling customers that they were refusing to pay protection money. Importantly,
the list was only disclosed, and the banners distributed, once they had
mustered a hundred signatories.
The results
have been remarkable. Addiopizzo has been the most successful campaign
against racketeering in the island’s history, says Mr Palazzo. Some 20% of
shops now declare that they don’t pay the mafia. Additionally, reports to
the police of attempted coercion rose from 178 in 2004 to 260 in 2011.
The key to the
success of Addiopizzo, says Mr Palazzo, is that values were changed from
the bottom upwards. If thousands of ordinary customers signal their intention
to change their behaviour, there is little pressure the mafia can bring to bear
on them. By linking the change in mindset to “dignity”, a deep-rooted Sicilian
value, Mr Palazzo says they also cleverly reclaimed the idea that standing up
to the mafia was socially appropriate. And by signing up shops quietly, and
then releasing the list as a fait accompli, mafia bosses, used to
dealing with top-down protests, found themselves submerged by a movement rising
from beneath their feet. By the time they recognised the threat, it was too
late.
Mr Palazzo says
that other business movements can learn much from Addiopizzo. Most
important is the power of producing a positive message. The Sicily campaign
worked because the consumers demonstrated that it was in the shop owners’
commercial interest to resist organised crime. This lesson can be applied to
other areas, such as global warming or promoting socially responsible
consumption, says the professor. In such cases, he thinks, the emphasis is
too often on the apocalyptic consequences of the status quo, rather than giving
positive reasons to change. As the mafia may be learning, changing values,
rather than peddling fear, can make for better results.
Comments
In the U.S., we call them
politicians.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea
Party Leader
