Title: Chief executive officers as white-collar criminals: an empirical study

Authors: Petter Gottschalk

Addresses: Department of Leadership and Organization, BI Norwegian Business School, Nydalsveien 37, 0484 Oslo, Norway

Abstract: This paper addresses the following research question: What differences might be found between white-collar criminals in the position of chief executive officers vs. white-collar criminals in other positions? Based on articles in Norwegian financial newspapers for one year, a total of 57 white-collar criminals convicted to jail sentences were identified. It was found that CEOs are involved in fraud and other kinds of financial crime involving less money in smaller companies with less revenue and employees, and less people were involved in their crime as compared to non-CEOs in the sample.

Keywords: white-collar crime; descriptive statistics; court cases; archival analysis; newspapers; chief executive officers; CEOs; Norway; fraud; financial crime.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBGE.2011.044737

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2011 Vol.6 No.4, pp.385 - 396

Published online: 06 Jan 2012 *

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