ABSTRACT
The American Dream and its culture of competition contain, to use David Matza and Gresham Sykes's term, subterranean values that are favorable to those who are predisposed to employ self-deception to secure their advantage through white-collar illegalities. The history of white-collar crime and efforts to control it illustrate all of the general principles that have been identified regarding deception. Coleman extended neutralization theory by arguing that white-collar offenders latch on to neutralizations that derive from the culture of competition. Sykes and Matza theorized that juvenile delinquents use neutralizations to short-circuit the hold of traditional values so that they can engage in deviant or criminal behavior without suffering any psychic costs. The motivation to justify or excuse white-collar crime through the use of neutralizations may actually be deeply embedded in unconscious mechanisms of brain functioning that promote self-deception. The processes of self-deception apply in organizations.
