ABSTRACT
Corporate executives regularly engage in various types of white-collar offenses that often result in serious economic, physical, and social harm. This chapter focuses on individual and organizational-level theories that help to explain why executives engage in white-collar offenses. It discusses how individuals, corporations, and society at large are harmed by deviant executives and highlights strategies and policies that may deter executives from engaging in future corporate and occupational offenses. The chapter then focuses on some of the most common and popular explanations: techniques of neutralization, differential association, control balance theory, relative deprivation, and self-control. It also explains forms of white-collar and corporate crimes by executives using case studies to understand how executives cheat. The chapter then discusses the three important American elite white-collar crimes from the past two decades. They are, Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, Jack Abramoff's lobbying scandal, and the Enron energy corporation that was built upon bogus accounting practices that dramatically increased its claimed profit margins.
