Organising White-Collar and Corporate Crimes: Necessity, Contingency, and the Mechanisms of Crime Commission

• In Event: Plenary 2 - Friday

Abstract

This talk presents a conceptual and analytical framework, that of an organisational perspective, for understanding and explaining white-collar and corporate crimes. This perspective encourages us to think about how we can produce and systematise knowledge on (1) how such crimes are organised, (2) why they are organised as they are and who gets involved in them, as primary offenders and as facilitators and money launderers, and (3) about the ‘real’ factors that shape these organisational dynamics over time within particular contexts and under varying conditions. ‘Organisation’ means many things: the distal/proximal social relations that create and shape crime opportunities and their structures; the mechanisms, relations, processes and conditions that are necessary for the commission, or unfolding, or for the non-commission, of white-collar crimes and how these are contingently connected to particular contexts; the people that collaborate and otherwise associate in the pursuit of criminal goals; the actual or potential skills, expertise and abilities of these people to accomplish (or resist) particular behaviours that are required of them, as well as the human, social, cultural and material antecedents that enable white-collar crimes to flourish or fade. Thinking in terms of ‘organisation’ has implications for explaining white-collar and corporate crimes, and in this talk I will explore some of these key issues.

Author

• Nicholas Lord, The University of Manchester, UK