Chairman of the Board Incarcerated for White-Collar Crime after Bankruptcy: What Does His Autobiography Tell Us about Convenience?

ABSTRACT

Some members of the upper echelon in society violate laws whenever they feel necessary. They have access to resources to commit and conceal financial crime while they deny the guilty mind. Autobiographies by convicted white-collar offenders are an interesting source of information to understand motives, opportunities, and willingness for deviant behaviors. This research applies the theory of convenience to study the autobiography of a convicted chairman of the board in Norway. While claiming corporate crime for the benefit of the business, he actually carried out occupational crime to benefit himself. As an entrepreneur, he felt entitled to do whatever he considered necessary. He suffered from narcissistic identification, where there is little difference between personal money and company money.

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Petter Gottschalk

Petter Gottschalk is professor in the department of leadership and organizational behavior at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo Norway. After completing his education at Technische Universität Berlin, Dartmouth College, MIT, and Henley Management College, he took on executive positions in technology enterprises for twenty years before joining academics. Dr. Gottschalk has published extensively on knowledge management, intelligence strategy, police investigations, white-collar crime, and fraud examinations. He lectured at Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice, University of New Haven in 2015 and at the Department of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati in 2018.