Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal

by Eugene Soltes Narrated by Johnny Heller

Overview

Rarely does a week go by without a well-known executive being indicted for engaging in a white-collar crime. Perplexed as to what drives successful, wealthy people to risk it all, Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes spent seven years in the company of the men behind the largest corporate crimes in history-from the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the Ponzi schemers Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford.



Soltes refutes popular explanations of why seemingly successful executives engage in crime. White-collar criminals, he shows, are not merely driven by excessive greed or hubris, nor do they usually carefully calculate the costs and benefits before breaking the law. Instead, he shows that most of these executives make decisions the way we all do-on the basis of their intuitions and gut feelings.



Based on extensive interaction with nearly fifty former executives, Soltes provides insights into why some saw the immediate effects of misconduct as positive, why executives often don't feel the emotions most people would expect, and how acceptable norms in the business community can differ from those of the broader society.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"[Soltes] has done a great service with Why They Do It. Not only does he draw on psychological research to dissect the way white-collar criminals think-or fail to think-before they act. But he also interviews several of the most famous white-collar criminals of our time, among them, the corrupt lawyer Marc Dreier and the financial swindlers Allen Stanford and Bernie Madoff. He presents what he has found in a spirit of understanding rather than condemnation."—Wall Street Journal

"[Soltes] takes a unique approach, looking for the connections between what motivated these men - and yes, they are all men - and asking not what they did but why they did it....Soltes creates some fascinating portraits."—Washington Post

"Groundbreaking...[an] impressive debut...A forcefully developed and documented contribution to our further understanding of high-level criminality in lightly regulated free markets."—Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal

★ 10/01/2016
Soltes (Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business Sch.) has written a groundbreaking book on executive misconduct. It draws on the author's interviews with multiple convicted white-collar felons, including Bernie Madoff and Dennis Kozlowski. The author shows how these managers rationalize their actions, rely on instinct, and fall victim to temptation and corporate culture. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 argues that these criminals don't make cool cost-benefit decisions, contrary to popular belief. Part 2 uses numerous case studies and describes the changing scholarly explanations for white-collar crime. The third section is the work's culmination, with an in-depth interview and analysis of Bernie Madoff, who appears to be a psychopath—Madoff views his victims as suckers who benefited from his scheme before in unraveled. The volume concludes that the organizations that spawn these criminals must be punished to change their leaders' values. VERDICT Engaging, precisely researched, and well argued, this is a spectacular achievement in business ethics, corporate culture, and true crime. Highly recommended for all audiences.—Harry Charles, St. Louis

Kirkus Reviews

2016-08-10
A groundbreaking study of the psychology and motivations of white-collar criminals.Using interviews, correspondence, and phone calls over seven years with, among many others, Bernie Madoff, Enron’s chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, and Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski, Soltes (Business Administration/Harvard Business School) provides special insight into insider trading, violations of financial reporting requirements, and pyramid schemes. In his impressive debut, the author has gathered in one place the thoughts and reflections of this group of criminals, many of whom have become well-known thanks to extensive media exposure. Soltes begins with a theoretical discussion of the roots of human behavior in an intriguing attempt to discern how propensities for ethical misconduct and criminal behavior occur. The subsequent discussions with the perpetrators concern their crimes, motives, and rationalizations. The author refutes the contention that white-collar criminality is distinct from criminality at large as essentially a race- or class-driven argument. He emphasizes instead how the business environment and the incentives for management to succeed foster white-collar crime. Management decisions, he insists, involve moral choices since they involve “the potential to help or harm another person.” Soltes prefers to “consider the possibility that illegal business decisions—moral decisions in their own right—are actually made much like any other kind of decision.” The interviewees’ rationalizations and “euphemistic labeling” are quite illustrative. Fastow, Enron’s financial wizard, said, “I was doing exactly what I was incentivized to do. We wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble if we just wanted to cheat. We were finding ways to get around the rules but going through a complex process to find the loopholes to allow us to do it.” Madoff preferred to view the fraudulent scheme for which he was convicted as “something closer to oversight than to recklessness.” The author also discusses the regulations related to white-collar crime and corrects some popular misconceptions—about insider trading, for example. A forcefully developed and documented contribution to our further understanding of high-level criminality in lightly regulated free markets.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171332648
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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