Unethical decision making : towards understanding the factors that influence a white collar criminal’s decision to commit a crime

Abstract

Although the fraud triangle has been used to study the factors that influence a person to commit a white collar crime, it has not fully explained how the decision is made. Ethical Decision Making (EDM) is an attempt at explaining the decision more comprehensively; however, has not been studied in the context of white collar crime. The development of an Integrated EDM (I-EDM) model has presented an opportunity to study the decision making process in white collar crime with a new theoretical lens. In an explorative study, we conducted 17 qualitative interviews with persons convicted of white collar crimes and, at the time of the study, incarcerated whilst they served out their sentences. We found that interviewees, once the first relatively small act was committed, found themselves in a slippery slope of repeated acts, increasing in frequency and quantum. We also found that interviewees tended to have an external locus of moral control and took little ownership of, and interest in, EDM. Lastly, we found that interviewees relied heavily on their own subjective states in making their decisions. Our contribution was to show that the I-EDM model is able to explicate a greater variety of the themes emergent from the data than the fraud triangle. We created fertile ground for future research in EDM in the context of white collar crime, particularly with regards to the learning, issue intensity, emotional, moral character development, moral ownership and moral self-efficacy elements.