Blame Game and Rotten Apples in Private Investigation Reports: The Case of Hadeland and Ringerike Broadband in Norway

Abstract

Authors are permitted to self-archive the peer-reviewed (but not final) version of a contribution on the contributor's personal website, in the contributor's institutional repository or archive, subject to an embargo period of 24 months for social science and humanities (SSH) journals and 12 months for scientific, technical, and medical (STM) journals following publication of the final contribution. ABSTRACT The blame game is a term often used to describe a phenomenon which happens in groups of people when something goes wrong. The blame game hypothesis postulates that private investigators may be misled in their search for suspects, and that suspected individuals do not necessarily become subject to a fair investigation by financial crime specialists and fraud examiners. The rotten apple hypothesis postulates that it is comforting to assume that one bad apple within an organization is essentially responsible for the crime that is all too prevalent. The rotten apple view of white-collar crime is a comfortable perspective to apply to business and public organizations as it allows them to look no further than suspect a single individual. Based on a case study of the Norwegian company Hadeland and Ringerike Broadband, this article discusses blame game and rotten apple issues in an internal investigation report written by an external financial crime specialist. The study finds support for both hypotheses, as blame is mainly isolated to the criminal and his superior, and both board and top management are protected from scrutiny.

When private internal investigators turn against the whistleblower

“…Explanations affect outcomes such as trust in the organization, feelings of anger, dissatisfaction, frustration, and stress. Suspects find it unfear, especially when suspicions develop into more-grounded or less-grounded accusations (Gottschalk, 2016).…”

“…Whistleblowers are supposed by be treated as information sources by internal investigators, and they are supposed to be protected against reprisals and revenge. Investigators should never play the blame game (Gottschalk, 2016).…”

“…This case study is important, as the business of fraud examiners in private internal investigations is growing without being subject to any regulation in most jurisdictions (Button and Gee, 2013;Schneider, 2006). The purpose of this article is to test the blame game hypothesis suggesting that fraud examiners can be hired to place the blame for negative incidents where the client would like to see the blame (Gottschalk, 2016).…”

Blame game in private investigation reports: The case of Deloitte examination at Telenor VimpelCom

“…The following description of the blame game hypothesis is based on research articles by Gottschalk (, ) in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling , where the blame game hypothesis as well as the rotten apple hypothesis was applied to the private investigation in a utility company.…”

“…An investigation should be independent and apply information sources and knowledge categories that are relevant to the case. Characteristics of professional examiners include integrity, objectivity, and accountability (Gottschalk, , ).…”