Petter Gottschalk

The principal aim of Corporate Crisis Recovery: Managing Organizational Deviance, Reputation, and Risk is to complement and expand criminological discourse on the concept of the social license to operate as a means of influencing the behaviour of corporations. In recent years, the wide-spanning consequences of some very public globalized corporate crises – including fiscal and environmental impact, staff retention, and organizational survival – have led to a growing body of research on crisis perception and responsive strategic management. Developments that position corporate crisis recovery as an anticipated requirement of visible compliance to normalized and anticipated standards of ethical practice and business conduct. Utilizing convenience theory to illustrate how corporations, and the individuals therein, are able to lose, repair, and recover the corporate license to operate after corruption and scandal, the book develops to evaluate the responses of the public and criminal justice process to serious reputational damage and substantial breach of trust.

This book discusses the role of whistleblowing in the detection of white-collar crime through examination of publicly available internal investigation reports and evaluation of allegations and suspicions of potential misconduct. The analysis focuses on offender convenience, considering factors such as motive, opportunity, and willingness to engage in deviant behavior. This process also evaluates the maturity of the investigation, critically reviewing the report for relevance, information sources, and basis of conclusions, in order to assign the investigation to a stage on the following growth models: • Activity oriented investigation • Problem oriented investigation • Detection oriented investigation • Value oriented investigation. This approach facilitates a comprehensive understanding of the investigation process and its findings. The method used aims to prove the presence of deviant behavior in the white-collar officials and impact of a clean investigation process. This book is ideal for scholars and practitioners of white-collar crime.

This book examines the role of Chief Executives in white collar crime from a convenience theory perspective. Privileged position status, legitimate resource access, institutional deterioration, lack of control and guardianship, and criminal networks such as cartels are some of the typical factors of opportunity convenience when chief executives commit white-collar crime. By presenting and discussing such factors, this book aims to clarify vulnerabilities in organizational settings when the deviant chief executive takes advantage of their position for criminal means. The book applies convenience theory to explain a variety of cases of corporate crime committed by chief executives. The work will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of criminology and criminal justice, law enforcement policy, business management and organizational behavior.

Investigation reports are written by fraud examiners after completion of internal reviews in client organizations when there was suspicion of financial wrongdoing. Fraud examiners are expected to answer questions regarding what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and why. This book presents a number of case studies of investigation reports by fraud examiners, offering a framework for studying the report as well as insights into convenience of fraud. The case studies, including KPMG and PwC, focus on two important subjects. First, convenience themes are identified for each case. Themes derive from the theory of convenience, where fraud is a result of financial motives, organizational opportunities, and personal willingness for deviant behaviors. Second, review maturity is identified for each case. Review maturity derives from a stages-of-growth model, where the investigation is assigned a level of maturity based on explicit criteria. The book provides useful insights towards approaching fraud examinations to enable better understanding of the rational explanations for corporate fraud. The book is framed from the perspective of private policing, which contextualizes how investigation reports are examined. This book is a valuable resource for scholars and upper-level students researching and studying auditing and investigation work in the corporate and public sectors. Business and management as well as criminal justice scholars and students will learn from the case studies how to frame a white-collar crime incident by application of convenience theory and how to evaluate a completed internal investigation by fraud examiners.

This book makes a distinctive and innovative contribution to the study of white-collar and corporate crime through detailed examination of the use, affect, and violation of the corporate social license – a concept frequently extended to a license to operate. Whilst discrete aspects of corporate social responsibility have found their way into the discourse on business deviance and crime, no single book to date has provided a detailed exploration of social licence through a criminological lens. Here, using an interdisciplinary focus which includes illustrative case-studies and large-scale original fieldwork, Gottschalk and Hamerton explore European, North American, Asian, and global perspectives to identify, position, and reveal the impact of the social license on contemporary conceptions of white-collar and corporate deviance and crime. Corporate Social License: A Study in Legitimacy, Conformance, and Corruption will be of interest to scholars of criminology, law, business management, and sociology along with professionals within allied fields.

Compliance has long been identified by scholars of white-collar crime as a key strategic control device in the regulation of corporations and complex organisations. Nevertheless, this essential process has been largely ignored within criminology as a specific subject for close scrutiny – Corporate Compliance: Crime, Convenience and Control seeks to address this anomaly. This initiating book applies the theory of convenience to provide criminological insight into the enduring self-regulatory phenomenon of corporate compliance. Convenience theory suggests that compliance is challenged when the corporation has a strong financial motive for illegitimate profits, ample organisational opportunities to commit and conceal wrongdoing, and executive willingness for deviant behaviour. Focusing on white-collar deviance and crime within corporations, the book argues that lack of compliance is recurrently a matter of deviant behaviour by senior executives within organisations who abuse their privileged positions to commission, commit and conceal financial crime.

This volume looks at the emerging perspective to the social license and white-collar and corporate crime in criminal justice. While most scholarship explains the frequent lack of police involvement, prosecution, and punishment through various theoretical perspectives that reflect the legal license to operate, the social license to operate illustrates punishment of violations that can cause termination of executives, market loss, and other serious harm to individuals and firms. This book presents several case studies where fraud examiners reviewed the legal license, while the social license was ignored, distinguishing between punishment from violations of the legal license and punishment from violations of the social license to operate. This volume is ideal for crime analysts and scholars of corporate and white-collar crime.

This book investigates how offenders of white-collar crime misuse legal loopholes in the courtroom. From powerful and corrupt alliances to a tough judicial battle, this volume looks at case studies from across the world to shed light on these matters and others, including:• How legal systems work when offenders have deep roots and connections• The courtroom proceedings and how offenders can manipulate the law• Global case studies supporting recommendations for resolving these issues The inside-look into the courtroom and accompanying critical analysis make this volume perfect for new graduate scholars, practitioners, and researchers working with perpetrators of white-collar crime.

This book provides the first thorough examination of the concept of lawyer roles in knowledge work, offering a detailed comparative exploration and analysis of the globalized legal services industry in terms of individual and corporate professional functions. Knowledge management has long been identified by scholars within the business sphere as a key strategic device in the development of complex organizations and developing markets. However, this essential process has been largely ignored within socio-legal studies and professional practice applications as a specific subject for close scrutiny. Lawyer Roles in Knowledge Work seeks to address this anomaly, with Gottschalk and Hamerton recognizing the strong lineage and correlation that exists between the study of knowledge management and contemporary legal practice. Using an interdisciplinary focus which includes illustrative case-studies, the book explores European, North American, and global perspectives as well as models to identify, position, and reveal the forward-looking lawyer as a defender, enabler, and investigator. In doing so, it revaluates current strategic legal practice and organizational behaviour within the context of changing patterns of business, the workplace, social rules, systems of governance, decision making, social ordering and control. Lawyer Roles in Knowledge Work will speak to students of law, business management, criminology, and sociology, along with legal practitioners and professionals within allied fields.

This book applies a structural model of convenience theory to suspected crime and a maturity model to investigation reports. Evidence of white-collar convenience themes in each case study is derived from internal investigation reports by fraud examiners. The study of white-collar offenders has received increased attention in recent years. This book contributes to our understanding of financial crime by privileged individuals in professional settings by identifying convenience themes for offenders. Based on the theory of convenience, the work presents a number of case studies to identify convenience in financial motive, organizational opportunity, and willingness for deviant behavior. Case studies presented are from Austria, Asia, Congo, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. The book will be of interest to researchers and academics in Law, Criminology, Business, and Sociology. It will also provide a valuable resource for fraud examiners, defense attorneys, police investigators, and prosecutors.

This book reviews a range of reports written by fraud examiners after completing internal investigations. These reports are normally kept secret and are the property of client organizations, which do not wish to disclose potential wrongdoing that can harm the reputation of the businesses. Fraud Examinations in White-Collar Crime Investigations was able to retrieve several recent reports, including foreign aid kickbacks, Russian favors to the Biathlon president, and Leon Black’s deals with Jeffrey Epstein. While not claiming that the obtained reports are representative for the outcome of the private investigation industry, the reports do provide insights into the variety of issues that fraud examiners address in their internal investigations and the quality of their work. This book identifies convenience themes and assesses investigation maturity across the reports analyzed. It considers the motives of and opportunities for white-collar criminals, as well as their willingness to engage in unlawful activity, and assesses to what extent fraud examiners are either efficient or deficient in their work. A compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, law, and politics, and all those interested in fraud examinations in relation to white-collar crime.

As documented in a number of case studies (from Telia Telecom in Sweden to Wirecard in Germany) in this book, recidivism seems to be of a substantial magnitude in corporate crime. Corporations tend to repeat white-collar offenses such as financial crime and environmental crime in various forms as long as they find it convenient. A minor fine from time to time and dismissal of some executives as scapegoats do not prevent corporations from committing and concealing new offenses as long as there is a convenient financial motive, a convenient organizational opportunity, and a convenient willingness for deviant behavior. Businesses and their executives tend to be recidivists who get away with light punishment in most jurisdictions. The relevant audiences for this book include law students, business students, sociology students, and criminology students. Fraud examiners, defense attorneys, compliance officers, police investigators, as well as prosecutors can find the structural model of convenience to be an ideal template in preparing corporate crime case narratives.

Traditionally, control in organizations is concerned with top-down approaches, where executives attempt to direct their employees’ attention, behaviors, and performance to align with the organization’s goals and objectives. This book takes a new approach by turning the problem of control upside down as it focuses on control of executives who find white-collar crime convenient. The bottom-up approach to executive compliance focuses on organizational measures to make white-collar crime less convenient for potential offenders. Rather than focusing on the regulatory formalities and staged procedures of compliance and audits, the book emphasizes the organizational challenges involved in compliance work when trusted corporate officials exhibit deviant behavior, refining, and advancing knowledge in this field by reference to contemporary international case studies and associated original evaluative research. The themes and cases covered are carefully selected to provide the reader with an insight into professional conduct and procedural practice – the organization of corporate compliance success, failure, and corruption – with the theory of convenience placed at the fore. It is the bottom-up approach by application of convenience theory that makes the proposed book unique compared to other books on corporate compliance. This book is a valuable resource for scholars and upper-level students researching and studying in the areas of business administration, organizational behavior, corporate and white-collar crime, as well as business ethics and auditing.

Compliance has long been identified by scholars of white-collar crime as a key strategic control device in the regulation of corporations and complex organisations. Nevertheless, this essential process has been largely ignored within criminology as a specific subject for close scrutiny – Corporate Compliance: Crime, Convenience and Control seeks to address this anomaly. This initiating book applies the theory of convenience to provide criminological insight into the enduring self-regulatory phenomenon of corporate compliance. Convenience theory suggests that compliance is challenged when the corporation has a strong financial motive for illegitimate profits, ample organisational opportunities to commit and conceal wrongdoing, and executive willingness for deviant behaviour. Focusing on white-collar deviance and crime within corporations, the book argues that lack of compliance is recurrently a matter of deviant behaviour by senior executives within organisations who abuse their privileged positions to commission, commit and conceal financial crime.

Investigation reports are written by fraud examiners after completion of internal reviews in client organizations when there was suspicion of financial wrongdoing. Fraud examiners are expected to answer questions regarding what happened, when it happened, how it happened, and why. This book presents a number of case studies of investigation reports by fraud examiners, offering a framework for studying the report as well as insights into convenience of fraud. The case studies, including KPMG and PwC, focus on two important subjects. First, convenience themes are identified for each case. Themes derive from the theory of convenience, where fraud is a result of financial motives, organizational opportunities, and personal willingness for deviant behaviors. Second, review maturity is identified for each case. Review maturity derives from a stages-of-growth model, where the investigation is assigned a level of maturity based on explicit criteria. The book provides useful insights towards approaching fraud examinations to enable better understanding of the rational explanations for corporate fraud. The book is framed from the perspective of private policing, which contextualizes how investigation reports are examined. This book is a valuable resource for scholars and upper-level students researching and studying auditing and investigation work in the corporate and public sectors. Business and management as well as criminal justice scholars and students will learn from the case studies how to frame a white-collar crime incident by application of convenience theory and how to evaluate a completed internal investigation by fraud examiners.

This initiating monograph provides the first thorough examination of the concept of white-collar crime online. Applying an offender-based perspective which considers the central role of convenience, it seeks to inform, improve and develop the current literature on cybercrime, whilst paying particular attention to its founding category within criminology. It argues that white-collar crime has receded from criminological perspectives on cybercrime in recent years and that a detailed, rich re-assessment of white-collar crime in contemporary digital societies is needed. Following a theoretical introduction, the book develops to discuss, inter alia, implications for corporate reputation, the various organizational roles utilized in mitigating external and internal threats, the unique considerations involved in law enforcement efforts, and likely future directions within the field. White-Collar Crime Online recognises the strong lineage and correlation that exists between the study of white-collar crime and cybercrime. Using convenience theory within a comparative analysis which includes case-studies, the book explores both European and American paradigms, perspectives and models to determine where white-collar crime exists within the contemporary workplace and how this might relate to the ongoing discourse on cybercrime. In doing so it revaluates criminological theory within the context of changing patterns of business, the workplace, social rules, systems of governance, decision making, social ordering and control. White-Collar Crime Online will speak to criminologists, sociologists and professionals; including those interested in cyber-security, economics, technology and computer science.

Traditionally, corporate control is all about top-down approaches to management of employees. Executives attempt to influence employees toward achieving business goals, and they attempt to prevent and detect wrongdoing, misconduct, and crime among employees. However, top-down approaches to corporate control do not work when executives and other privileged individuals in the business themselves commit and conceal their wrongdoing, misconduct, and crime in organizational settings. Then there is a need for a bottom-up approach in corporate control as outlined in this book. Bottom-up control refers to the manner in which organizational members can use different types of control mechanisms – such as whistleblowing, transparency, resource access, or culture – to monitor, measure, and evaluate executives’ avoidance of deviant behaviors and influence them toward achieving the organization’s goals in efficient and effective ways. The newly emerging perspective of a social license to operate forms part of the bottom-up strategy where criminalization becomes social property independent of the criminal justice system. The social license is predominantly centered on social permission for business activity where the media, social movements, and citizen watchdogs exert pressure, demand change, and bring top management to account. This book presents a novel approach to corporate control of white-collar crime based on the theory of convenience. White-collar crime is financial crime committed by privileged individuals who have legitimate access to resources based on the power and trust inherent through their professional positions. Convenience theory proposes that motive, opportunity, and willingness are the three dimensions that underlie white-collar crime in an organizational context. This book contributes to the study of white-collar criminality through a blend of theoretical discussions and practical materials that illuminate and support the use of convenience theory. The book discusses how bottom-up approaches can overcome the difficulty of detecting white-collar crime and overcome the barriers of preventing executive deviance.

This volume looks at the emerging perspective to the social license and white-collar and corporate crime in criminal justice. While most scholarship explains the frequent lack of police involvement, prosecution, and punishment through various theoretical perspectives that reflect the legal license to operate, the social license to operate illustrates punishment of violations that can cause termination of executives, market loss, and other serious harm to individuals and firms. This book presents several case studies where fraud examiners reviewed the legal license, while the social license was ignored, distinguishing between punishment from violations of the legal license and punishment from violations of the social license to operate. This volume is ideal for crime analysts and scholars of corporate and white-collar crime.

This book discusses private policing conducted by fraud examiners and financial crime specialists when there is suspicion of white-collar crime. The theory of convenience applies to the suspected crime, while the maturity model applies to the conducted investigation. Private policing of economic crime by fraud examiners in internal investigations is a topic of increasing concern as there is a growing business for law firms and auditing firms to conduct inquiries and reviews when there is suspicion of misconduct, wrongdoing, and crime by white-collar offenders. The key features of this book are the application of a structural model for convenience theory and the application of a maturity model for fraud examinations. The structural model assesses convenience themes for motive, opportunity, and willingness in each case study, while the maturity model assesses the level of private policing maturity in fraud examinations. For the first time, two emerging frameworks to study white-collar offenses and private policing maturity are introduced and applied to a number of cases from Denmark, Iceland, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. This book will be essential to those studying law, business, and criminology, as well as practicing fraud examiners.

This book examines the role of Chief Executives in white collar crime from a convenience theory perspective. Privileged position status, legitimate resource access, institutional deterioration, lack of control and guardianship, and criminal networks such as cartels are some of the typical factors of opportunity convenience when chief executives commit white-collar crime. By presenting and discussing such factors, this book aims to clarify vulnerabilities in organizational settings when the deviant chief executive takes advantage of their position for criminal means. The book applies convenience theory to explain a variety of cases of corporate crime committed by chief executives. The work will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the areas of criminology and criminal justice, law enforcement policy, business management and organizational behavior.