Theory is a necessary part of research in organization sciences (Ashkanasy, 2016), and convenience theory emphasizes the organizational opportunity to commit and conceal white-collar crime. Theory is a systematic, interrelated set of concepts that explain a body of data. In convenience theory, three main concepts explain the occurrence of white-collar crime: financial motive, organizational opportunity, and personal willingness. These concepts are all interrelated as organizational opportunity interacts with financial motive and personal willingness. Interactions between motive, opportunity, and willingness determine the extent of convenience perceived by a potential white-collar crime offender.
Theory is a way of imposing conceptual order on the empirical complexity of the phenomenal world. Convenience theory offers a conceptual order on financial crime by members in the elite in society who certainly do not need to commit crime for their own survival. Theory offers a statement of relations between concepts within a set of boundary assumptions and constraints. Convenience theory makes assumptions about human behavior, such as individualsâ motives and desires as well as individualsâ behaviors in organizational contexts. A theory reflects the magnitude of a disciplineâs knowledge base. Convenience theory reflects and builds on a knowledge base from criminology, psychology, management, strategy and many other disciplines.
As argued by Thornberry (1989: 52), theory is a set of logically interrelated propositions designed to explain a particular phenomenon:
From this perspective, therefore, the two most fundamental characteristics of a theory are its propositional form and its explanatory purpose.
In line with this argument, convenience theory integrates a number of perspectives that propose influence on the extent of white-collar crime. By directing these perspectives towards more or less crime, they provide possible explanations of crime occurrence.
Theory does more than abstracting and organizing knowledge. It also signals the values upon which we build knowledge (Suddaby, 2014). In white-collar crime research, a number of values are at stake. For example, not all are equal to the law. Some are simply too powerful to jail (Pontell et al., 2014). Ever since Sutherland (1939) coined the term white-collar crime, researchers in the field have emphasized the value of preventing and detecting elite crime. Therefore, an important value signaled by convenience theory is that white-collar crime is just as bad as â and maybe even much worse than â traditional street crime including rape, murder and theft, since offendersâ motive is found in their choice of convenience with no regard to harm and victims (Dodge, 2020b). This signal from white-collar crime research is controversial still today. Many seem to consider white-collar criminals as individuals who were unlucky, who made a mistake that was not intentional, who made a short cut in a stressed job situation, and who are not really crooks. According to Leap (2007), white-collar crime imposes a degree of physical and emotional trauma on its victims that far exceeds the trauma inflicted by street criminals. Victims âsuffer from something terrible that âhappensâ to them or is deliberately done to themâ (Cohen, 2001: 14).
Developing theory is neither easy nor ever completed. Weick (1989) defines theory development as disciplined imagination, where theory is an ordered set of assertions about a generic behavior or structure assumed to hold throughout a significantly broad range of specific instances. Offenders can find the generic behavior in white-collar crime in the abuse of power, influence and trust, and the generic structure is visible in the organizational context among convicted offenders.
As suggested by Barney (2018), a theoretical contribution like this book on the theory of convenience is part of an ongoing conversation in the literature. The conversation is concerned with white-collar crime as a phenomenon and its occurrences in different situations. One unresolved theoretical issue related to white-collar crime is its convenience relative to legal means of reaching desired states for privileged individuals and organizations. This unresolved issue is important, as both prevention and detection of white-collar crime rests on a relevant understanding of its motives, opportunities, and behaviors.
As suggested by Haveman et al. (2019: 241), âit is theory that gives meaning to empirical resultsâ. Insights into white-collar crime occurrences are dependent on theory that guides us to what questions to ask and tells us why they are important. Theory provides a discipline of reasoning about occurrences that otherwise would end up as special cases of practice in the minds of observers.
There are a number of interactions between dimensions in the theory of crime convenience. For example, opportunity enhances temptation (Steffens-meier and Allan, 1996: 478):
An illegitimate enterprise, being able tends to make one more willing, just as being willing increases the prospects for being able.
Thus, the organizational dimension of opportunity influences the desire for financial gain in the economical dimension. Opportunity also influences the behavioral willingness, while the behavioral willingness in turn influences abilities in terms of organizational opportunities.
The theory of convenience finds its base in reasoning by analogy where the core analogy is that the organization is an arena for individual motives, opportunities, and behaviors with varying convenience options. Many of the supporting perspectives find their basis in analogies as well. For example, the principal-agent perspective derives from the analogy that the organization is a nexus of contracts, as explained later in this book. Ketokivi et al. (2017) argue that theoretical reasoning by analogy provides a link between two domains of meaning: the source and the target domains. The source domain in convenience theory is convenience orientation experienced among people, while the target domain is the organization where white-collar crime can occur.
The convenience perspective suggests that motivation (personal and organizational ambitions), opportunity (offense and concealment in an organizational context), as well as behavior (lack of control and neutralization of guilt) make financial crime a convenient option to avoid threats and to exploit opportunities.
Convenience theory makes statements about relationships between motive, opportunity, and behavior. The primary goal of the theory is to answer the questions of how, when, and why white-collar crime. The question of how is answered in the organizational context where there is an opportunity to commit white-collar crime. The question of when is answered in the behavioral context where the offender finds it relevant to apply deviant behavior. The question of why is answered in the economical dimension where the motive is profit to avoid threats and to exploit possibilities.
The key components of convenience theory are similar to Felson and Bobaâs (2017) problem triangle analysis in routine activity theory. Routine activity theory suggests three conditions for crime to occur: a motivated offender, an opportunity in terms of a suitable target, and the absence of a capable or moral guardian. Moral wrongfulness includes cheating, deception, stealing, coercion, exploitation, disloyalty, promise-breaking, and disobedience. The existence or absence of a likely guardian represents an inhibitor or facilitator for crime. The premise of routine activity theory is that crime is to a minor extent affected by social causes such as poverty, inequality and unemployment. Motivated offenders are individuals who are not only capable of committing criminal activity, but are willing to do so. Suitable targets can be something that offenders recognize as particularly attractive.
When introducing routine activity theory, Cohen and Felson (1979) concentrated upon the circumstances in which offenders carry out predatory criminal acts. Most criminal acts require convergence in space and time of (1) likely offenders, (2) suitable targets, and (3) the absence of capable guardians against crime. The lack of any of these elements is sufficient to prevent the successful completion of a crime. Though guardianship is implicit in everyday life, it usually is invisible by the absence of violations and is therefore easy to overlook. Guardians are not only protective tools, weapons and skills, but also mental models in the minds of potential offenders that stimulate self-control to avoid criminal acts.
When compared to convenience theory, routine activity theoryâs three conditions do not cover all three dimensions. The likely offenders occur in the behavioral dimension, while both suitable targets and absence of capable guardians occur in the organizational dimension. While routine activity theory defines conditions for crime to occur, convenience theory defines situations where crime occurs. White-collar crime only occurs when there is a financial motive in the economical dimension.
Another traditional theory is worthwhile to compare to convenience theory. Fraud theory with the fraud triangle suggests three conditions for fraud (Cressey, 1972): (1) incentives and pressures, (2) opportunities, and (3) attitudes and rationalization. Incentives and pressures belong in the economical dimension; opportunities belong in the organizational dimension, while attitudes and rationalization belong in the behavioral dimension. As such, the fraud triangle covers all dimensions of convenience theory. However, at the core of convenience theory is convenience in all three dimensions as well as opportunity found in the organizational setting based on professional role and trust by others. Furthermore, convenience theory emphasizes the relative importance of convenience, where offenders have alternative legitimate actions available to respond to incentives and pressures, but they choose illegitimate actions since these actions subjectively emerge as more convenient. We return to this theme when we compare Cresseyâs (1972) fraud triangle with the convenience triangle.
Some have suggested that there is nothing as practical as a good theory. Ployhart and Bartunek (2019: 495) suggest the opposite, that there is nothing as theoretical as good pra...
