Macro Networks, Collectives, and Business Processes: An Integrated Approach to Organized Crime

brill.nl/eccl © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157181710X12659830399653 Macro Networks, Collectives, and Business Processes: An Integrated Approach to Organized Crime Toine Spapens Senior research fellow, Department of Criminal Law, Tilburg University, The Netherlands 1. Introduction Over the last few decades, criminologists have devoted considerable attention to how the concept of organized crime should be theorized. At the end of the 1960s, organized crime was modeled in terms of functional and hierarchical mafia syndicates. 1 Although criminologists criticized this approach from the beginning, it profoundly influenced the public image of organized crime, the ideas of policy makers, law-enforcement agencies, and, ironically, the