White-Collar Crime in Europe

Is White-Collar Crime Entrepreneurship?

Jose Neves Cruz, from the Faculty of Law of University of Porto, made a contribution to the 2012 Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology, in the category “Criminological Theory, Research and Education,” under the title “Is White-collar Crime Entrepreneurship?”. Here is the abstract: According to Baumol (1990), entrepreneurial talent does not always create social value but might be directed for destructive activities, e. g. white-collar crime. Departing from Baumol's hypothesis, we propose an integrated model for the empirical study of the individual factors of white-collar crime, based on the combination of two competing approaches that have been widely used to identify the individual factors of entrepreneurship: the personality traits model, and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The literature reveals similarities between the application of personality traits models to white-collar crime and to entrepreneurship supportive of the transposition. The cognitive psychological approach denies that entrepreneurial intentions result from hardly changeable personality traits. The TPB has been used for the study entrepreneurial intentions. Assuming Baumol' hypothesis, it would make sense extending its application to intentions of committing white-collar offenses.

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Further Reading

• “Is White-collar Crime Entrepreneurship?”, by Jose Neves Cruz (Proceedings)