Convenience in White-Collar Crime: Introducing a Core Concept

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 whitecollar crime emerges as an integrated explanation in need of more theoretical work as well as empirical study.

Negative organizational dynamics as enabler of white-collar crime

“…White-collar offenders are often not alone when committing financial crime (Gottschalk, 2017). They may exploit social capital by cooperating with people internally as well as with people externally.…”

“…Convenience is a relative concept concerned with the efficiency in time and effort as well as reduction in pain and solution to problems (Engdahl, 2015;Gottschalk, 2017). Convenience orientation refers to a person's general preference for maneuvers characterized by avoidance of pain and savings in time and effort.…”

White-collar crime

“…Especially businesses that practice secrecy -such as religious organizations -enable convenient concealment of financial crime (Gottschalk, 2016).…”

“…White-collar offenders reduce and eliminate their feeling of guilt by claiming that everyone else does it, that it is a mistake that the act is criminalized, and that they made a trade-off where the offense turned out to be the best alternative. There are a total of 13 identified neutralization techniques that white-collar criminals apply to rationalize their deviant behavior (Gottschalk, 2016).…”

“…The typical profile of a white-collar criminal includes the following attributes (Gottschalk, 2016):…”