Rotten apples versus rotten barrels in white collar crime : A qualitative analysis of white collar offenders in Norway

Abstract

White-collar crime is financial crime committed by white-collar criminals. Sensational white-collar crime cases regularly appear in the international business press and studies in journals of ethics and crime. It is certainly an interesting issue whether to view white-collar misconduct and crime as acts of individuals perceived as 'rotten apples' or as an indication of systems failure in the company, the industry or the society as a whole. The perspective of occupational crime is favoring the individualistic model of deviance, which is a human failure model of misconduct and crime. This rotten apple view of white-collar crime is a comfortable perspective to adopt for business organizations as it allows them to look no further than suspect individuals. In our sample of 255 convicted white-collar criminals, rotten apples received a jail sentence of 2.8 years on average, while rotten barrel members received only 1.9 years. The sample was drawn from newspaper accounts in Norway from 2009 to 2012.