ABSTRACT
White-collar criminals are individuals who commit occupationally related financial crimes in a professional or organizational setting, where they have legal access and can hide misconduct in legitimate transactions (Benson and Simpson, 2014). White-collar crime is a global problem of enormous dimensions. Fraud, financial manipulation, and corruption occur to varying degrees in every economy and society in the world. White-collar criminals are present in both the private and the public sectors of an economy. Public service motivation theory seeks to explain why individuals choose public service over work in the private sector, given the perceived disparity in pay scale, advancement opportunities, and overall work environment (Kjeldsen and Jacobsen, 2013). We apply this theory to answer the following research question (Benson and Gottschalk, 2015a, 2015b): What differences can be found in the prevalence and characteristics of white-collar criminals in the public versus the private sector?
