Rule-violating behaviour in white-collar offenders: A control group comparison
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370818794114 |
| Published date | 01 May 2020 |
| Date | 01 May 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818794114
European Journal of Criminology
2020, Vol. 17(3) 332 –351
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818794114
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Rule-violating behaviour
in white-collar offenders:
A control group comparison
Joost HR van Onna and
Victor R van der Geest
VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Adriaan JM Denkers
Independent social scientist, The Netherlands
Abstract
This study aims at enhancing our understanding of criminogenic individual-level factors in white-
collar crime, that is, fraudulent acts carried out in an occupational capacity or setting. We do
so by examining consistency of rule-violating behaviour across different settings outside the
occupational context in a sample of white-collar offenders (n = 637) and comparing it with a
matched control group (n = 1809), controlling for socio-demographic, crime and organizational
characteristics. Results show that white-collar offenders, including those holding high-trust
organizational positions, engaged in regulatory income tax violations and regulatory traffic
violations at significantly higher levels than did controls. This study concludes that individual
characteristics are likely to underlie the identified cross-contextual consistency in rule-violating
behaviour and debates the relevance of the findings for white-collar crime in organizations.
Keywords
control group, high-trust position, individual differences, rule violation, white-collar offenders
Introduction
A commonly held view in white-collar criminology is that individual involvement in
white-collar crime results primarily from differential exposure to criminogenic corporate
cultural values and occupational businesses practices (for example, Clinard and Yeager,
1980; Sutherland, 1983), organizational opportunity structures (for example, Benson and
Corresponding author:
Joost HR van Onna, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, VU University Amsterdam, De
Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam, 1081 HV, The Netherlands.
Email. j.van.onna@vu.nl
794114EUC0010.1177/1477370818794114European Journal of Criminologyvan Onna et al.
research-article2018
Article
van Onna et al. 333
Simpson, 2009) or strains (for example, Agnew et al., 2009). The personal and social
background of white-collar offenders (traits, states, cognitions) has traditionally been
considered to be relatively unimportant or even irrelevant for understanding white-collar
crime involvement (Braithwaite, 1984; Coleman, 2002; Sutherland, 1983). Although
purely situational explanations are contested on several theoretical and empirical grounds
(for example, the inability to account for between-individual differences leading up to
differential outcomes in similar criminogenic conditions; Apel and Paternoster, 2009;
Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1987, 1989) and a growing body of literature has brought ‘the
offender back in’ (Benson, 2013: 324), research has struggled to disentangle the influ-
ence of criminogenic contextual forces and criminogenic individual-level factors (but
see also, Jones and Kavanagh, 1996; Kish-Gephart et al., 2010).
One way of separating the two factors is by examining consistency in white-collar
offenders’ rule-violating behaviour across different contexts outside the occupational
and organizational context (Bem and Allen, 1974; Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Junger
et al., 2001) and comparing the level of rule-violating behaviour with a control group of
individuals with similar socio-demographic backgrounds and organizational positions
(Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990; Herbert et al., 1998; Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1989). If
white-collar offenders are overrepresented in rule-violating behaviour in different con-
texts outside their organizational setting, this would point towards a criminogenic pro-
pensity and contest a purely situational approach.
In the present study, we first examine to what extent white-collar offenders exhibit
rule-violating behaviour compared with control individuals with matched socio-demo-
graphic backgrounds, selected from the general population. The analysis proceeded
based on two independent types of rule-violating behaviour outside an organizational
context: regulatory income tax violations and regulatory traffic violations. In a next step,
we investigate rule-violating behaviour in those white-collar offenders from the sample
who had only a single offence registered to their name, allowing us to explore whether
these ‘one-shot’ offenders are truly law-abiding citizens and lacking a tendency for devi-
ance altogether, as suggested in literature (for example, Benson and Kerley, 2001;
Wheeler et al., 1988). Finally, we examine whether a tendency for rule-violating behav-
iour is also present in those offenders who occupy high-trust organizational positions,
such as director, treasurer or company owner. Because of the assumed criminogenic
nature, these positions play a central role in the study of white-collar crime (for example,
Cressey, 1953; Sutherland, 1983). However, little attention has been given (a) to possible
criminogenic characteristics, such as a tendency to bend or break rules, that select indi-
viduals into such high-trust positions, and (b) to interpersonal differences between indi-
viduals holding these positions, making some more willing or prone than others to take
advantage of criminal opportunities (Apel and Paternoster, 2009; Gottfredson and
Hirschi, 1990).
This study contributes to the literature in a number of ways. It is the first study to use
a non-criminal outcome measure as a proxy for a criminogenic propensity in white-collar
offenders, including those offenders who occupy potentially criminogenic high-trust
positions. Also, by examining outcome measures in settings that are characterized by
different and typically unrelated contextual influences, the present study helps to disen-
tangle contextual and individual forces. Finally, this is the first study that compares
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