Business Financial
Crime: Theories of
Motivation
Defining white collar crime
 Not
to do with poverty
 Not to do with social pathology
 Not to do with physical or
psychological pathology
‘crime committed by a person of high
status and respectability in the course
of his occupation’ (Sutherland 1949)
2
Defining white-collar crime
White-collar crime may be defined
approximately as a crime committed by a
person of respectability and high status in
the course of his occupation. . . the
financial cost of white-collar crime is
probably several times as great as the
financial cost of all the crimes which are
customarily regarded as the crime
problem. (Sutherland)
3
Problems with defining whitecollar crime
High-status offender?
 Definitional ambiguity
 Little distinction between crimes
committed by businesses and crimes
carried out against an organisation
‘crime committed in the course of legitimate
employment involving the abuse of an
occupational role’ (Croall 1992)

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‘if it can be shown that white collar
crimes are frequent, a general theory
that crime is to do with poverty and its
related pathologies is shown to be
invalid’
(Sutherland 1949)
5
Definitional
 Because
of this definitional
difficulty Clinar and Quinney
(1967) suggested replacing the
term white collar crime with two
constitutive terms “corporate” and
“occupational” crime
6
Occupational crime
For personal gain:
 Employee theft/computer time,
telephone embezzlement etc.
 Fraud with customers (charging for
work not done)
 Fiddling expenses, embezzlement,
tax evasion.
7
Corporate crime
 Offences
against employees
 Offences against investors
 Offences against consumers
 Offences against the public
 Offences against the state
8
Understanding corporate crime
 Organisational
profit,
goals:
growth, market control
 Individual
characteristics:
anomie
of success = unlimited ambition,
shrewdness and moral flexibility
9
Understanding corporate crime
 The
motive:
a
rational solution to the corporate
problem
 The
means:
– structured immoralities of
irresponsibility + a lack of law enforcement
ideology
 The
opportunity:
low
surveillance
10
Why are corporate crimes
different ?
 Offences
tend to be invisible
 The acts/offences tend to be very
complex
 There often is no one offender
 May be no victim or many victims
 Ambiguous criminal status
11
Edwin Sutherland
Theory of differential association:
 Criminal behaviour is learned not
inherited
 Learned in interaction with other persons
 Carried out within intimate personal groups
(i.e. not from impersonal activities such as
films or TV)
 Not just techniques that are learned but
motivations and rationalisations
12
Edwin Sutherland
 Direction
of motives and drives is
learned from definition of legal codes
as favourable or unfavourable
 Person becomes delinquent when
has an excess of definitions
favourable to law violation contrasted
with definitions unfavourable to
violation
13
Interactionist theory


The ability to develop shared meanings is the key
to understanding human interaction. Our ability to
think means what we effectively do, according to
Interactionists, is to create a sense of society and
culture in our minds. We behave "as if" these
things physically exist.
Thus, the world humans inhabit is a social
construction. This involves the idea that society is
a product of our ability to think and express our
thoughts symbolically. The things that we
recognise as being "part of our society" or
"part of our culture" are simply products of
our mind.
14
Interactionist theory


This is one reason why Interactionists reject the
idea that society has an objective existence that is
separate from the people who, through their
everyday relationships, create a sense of living in a
society. Society is an elaborate fiction we create to
help us make sense of our relationships and impose
some sort of order on them.
We create this fictional universe to make social life
possible, since without a sense of shared meanings
about what we see and do, interaction would, at
best, be very difficult and, at worst, impossible.
Cultures, therefore, represent the general store
of shared meanings that people create to give
them a feeling of having things in common and as
the basis for constructive social interaction.
15
Interactionist theory

For example, think of any dealings you
have had with people who do not behave
in ways that conform to your cultural
expectations. People who are drunk, for
example, frequently fail to observe
expected cultural norms and this makes it
very difficult for us to interact with them on
anything but a very basic level of
understanding.
16
Interactionist theory
In simple terms, therefore, we have to
consider the process whereby individuals
"agree to agree" about what they are doing
(the purpose of interaction) and why they are
doing it (the meaning of interaction).
 Interactionists generally start to explain this
process by referring to the concept of a
definition of the situation. That is, how we
define a situation affects how we behave
when we are in that situation. We can look
at this process in more detail in the following
way.

17
Interactionist theory

To make sense of the confusing world that we experience
on a daily basis, Interactionists argue that we use a process
of categorization and labelling. That is, as we interact we
categorise similar experiences in some way. For
example, we create categories of people based around our
perception of them as:








Male or female.
Young or old.
Employer / employee.
Traffic warden / police woman.
Husband / wife.
Each category of related phenomena is like a little box that
we hold inside our mind and, for our convenience, each little
box has:
a. A name or label that identifies it for us
b. A set of social characteristics inside. That is, a set of
related ideas that we associate with the label on the box. 18
Interactionist theory
 Thus,
when someone we meet
reveals one of their social labels to us
("I'm an accountant", for example) we
mentally "open the box" that contains
our store of knowledge about
“accountants".
19
Interactionist Theory of Motivation
 Generally
“standard” criminals seen as
abnormal individuals with significant
biological or psychological differences
(Coleman, 1987)
 Researchers on white-collar crime
generally do not take this view nor
link to family background or
psychological characteristics
20
Interactionist Theory of Motivation
 Researchers
have therefore looked
elsewhere to explain motivation.
 Interactionist theory seems best suited
to white collar crime
 Interactionists see motivation as a
symbolic construct i.e. the meaning
that individuals attribute to a particular
situation
21
Interactionist Theory of Motivation
 This
meaning of their social reality in
general structures their experience.
 It makes certain courses of action seem
appropriate while others are excluded.
 Cressey (1953) found that embezzlers
“adjust” the symbolic construction of
their behaviour to fit societal
expectations
22
Rationalisations

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Rationalisations are not after the fact but an
integral part of an “actor’s” motivation (most
common are)
Just borrowing the money
Denial of harm i.e.. No-one gets hurt
Unjust laws i.e. Government interference
Act necessary to achieve economic goal or to
survive i.e. therefore must comply especially in
work environment
Transfer of responsibility i.e. everyone is doing it
Deserve the money
23
Coleman
Interactionists argue that symbolic
constructs are learned from
association with others i.e. back to
Sutherland’s differential association theory
 Coleman argues that the interactionist
theory does not explain the motivations of
white collar crime
 Looks to modern industrial capitalism as a
factor

24
Culture of Competition
The idea that wealth and success are
central goals of human endeavour is
part of a larger complex of beliefs that may
be termed the “culture of competition”
 The pursuit of economic self interest and
the effort to surpass their fellows in the
accumulation of wealth and status are of
critical importance to these … actors
(Coleman, ibid)

25
Culture of Competition
Creates a pervasive sense of insecurity as
an undercurrent in industrial capitalism
 This fear of failure permeates every
stratum of contemporary society.
 It is a corollary of the demand for success.
 These factors have grown in the 21st
century

26
Culture of Competition
 Some
crimes result from the efforts of
individuals trying to live up to
expectations of associates and
friends.
 When viewed at group level the
culture of competition still appears.
27
Culture of Competition
 Anthropological
studies of hunting
and gathering societies find little of
this acquisitive materialism we see in
society
 First such individualism noted in early
days of the modern capitalist society
 Previously little surplus wealth existed
28
Normative Boundaries
 Ethical
standards for economic
behaviour are easily combined at a
theoretical level.
 However public see the contradiction
between the two ie. “nice guys finish
last”
 Major conflict in society
29
Subcultures
Given this societal conflict there are in
addition occupational subcultures present
 Each complex organisation has an “ethical
tone” that either reinforces or opposes the
normative standards for economic
behaviour
 Industry subcultures
 Occupational subcultures which cut across
industries and organisations

30
Subcultures
 Because
of this isolation work related
subcultures are able to maintain
certain criminal activities as acceptable
or recognised behaviour.
 GE price fixing example – they had
forgotten it was illegal
 Subcultures can also work to positive
effect
31
Punishment
The severity of punishment for white-collar
crime varies inversely with the power and
influence of the typical offender
 Studies show that street crimes are
punished more severely than occupational
crimes.
 Stay in nicer prisons
 Same inverse relationship also applies to
likelihood of prosecution

32
Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990)
Self Control Theory
 State that the absence of self control
combined with opportunity is adequate
to explain all crimes at all times.
 People with low self control are risk
seeking and insensitive to others
33
Shover and Hochstetler (2006)

Concept of rational choice
34