Knowledge management in criminal investigations: The case of fraud examiners

Abstract

The activity of private investigations by fraud examiners is a business of lawyers, auditors and other professionals who investigate suspicions of financial crime by white-collar criminals. Private investigations represent an interesting and unique field of knowledge management. In this paper, a number of private internal investigation reports or cases are evaluated in terms of their knowledge management approaches. The core message from all cases evaluated is that a contingent knowledge management approach is needed in internal investigations. The situation should determine what kind of knowledge to apply in a specific investigative challenge. Legal knowledge seems to dominate many investigations, where forensic accounting knowledge and management consulting knowledge might have been more appropriate