Corporate crime: a logical misconception, but with one analytical point
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-04-2020-0063 |
| Published date | 13 June 2020 |
| Date | 13 June 2020 |
| Pages | 112-119 |
| Subject Matter | Accounting & Finance,Financial risk/company failure,Financial crime |
| Author | Tage Alalehto |
Corporate crime: a logical
misconception, but with one
analytical point
Tage Alalehto
Department of Sociology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –In 1988, Donald Cressey published a previously overlooked article. According to Cress ey,
there was a lack in the agenda of corporate crime research concerning theory and concep tual precision of
what exactly the scientific object was and how it could reinforce our understanding of white-collar
criminality. Cressey stated the idea that a fictitious person, like a corporation, upon which were bestowed
properties such as a will of its own (intentions and motivations) and a consciousness to act morally and
ethically have a responsibility to follow the order of law, leads to a fundamental theoretical problem in
terms of discovering the cau ses of crimes committe d by such a fictitious person. I follow this line of
thought about the arguments made by representatives of corporate crime. Specifically, I follow the concept
of “decoupling”, by using various techn iques of formal logic. Th e conclusion is that the co ncept of
corporate crime is a logical contradiction (an eternal false statement), but the research has one analytical
point which must be incorporated into the research of white-collar criminality: how structural conditions
of a corporation’s policy and strategy “produce”or influence the individuals within the corporation to
make decisions.
Design/methodology/approach –This paper is a research paper based on thetechnic of formal logic.
The designof this research is sentence and modal logic.
Findings –The concept of corporate crime is logically a contradiction. Thereby it has no value in the
researchagenda of white-collar criminality.
Originality/value –To the best of the author’sknowledge, no one has done a formal logical analysisbased
on modal logicto investigate the consistence of the concept corporatecrime.
Keywords Corporate crime, Formal logic, Logical contradiction
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In 1988, Donald Cressey published a previously overlooked article (1989). Cressey argued
that there was a poverty in the research of corporate crime concerning theory and
conceptual precision of whatexactly the scientific object was and how it could reinforce our
understanding ofthis type of criminality.
According to Cressey, it was obvious that previous research treated a corporation as a
natural person (rather than a fictitious person), which could think and act because it had a
will of its own (intentions and motivations). Thus, the corporation was assumed to have
a consciousness and an ability to act morally and ethicallygiven the principles of the social
contract in the same way as a physical individual. So, if the corporation did something
illegal it could be accused of being an offenderacting immorally in relation to the law of the
contextual society. But this basic philosophical assumption led to one fundamental
theoretical problem for the research of corporate crime, i.e. “[...] the impossible task of
finding the cause of crimes committed by fictitious person”(Cressey, 1989, p. 32). This
statement is as relevanttoday as it was in 1988.
JFC
28,1
112
Journalof Financial Crime
Vol.28 No. 1, 2021
pp. 112-119
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1359-0790
DOI 10.1108/JFC-04-2020-0063
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