ABSTRACT
This article is concerned with white-collar criminals and considers the role of convenience in explaining crime occurrence. The article puts forward convenience as a theoretical concept that underlies existing theories and research on white-collar crime. Convenience seems present in all three dimensions of crime: economic dimension, organizational dimension, and behavioral dimension. Convenience in white-collar crime implies savings in time and effort by privileged and trusted individuals to solve a problem, where alternatives seem less attractive, and future threats of detection and punishment are minimal. The proposed theory of convenience in white-collar crime emerges as an integrated explanation in need of more theoretical work as well as empirical study.
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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. He has been the CEO of several companies including an ABB subsidiary. Dr. Gottschalk has published extensively on knowledge management, information technology strategy, law enforcement, police investigations, private internal investigations, financial crime, and white-collar criminals.