This article addresses the following research question: What are the characteristics of whitecollar criminals in Norway? Our research is based on data from articles in Norwegian financial newspapers for one year were a total of 67 white-collar criminals convicted to jail sentence were identified. Our sample is analyzed and presented in comparising with especially U.S. literature on characteristics of white-collar criminals, which is believed to be both general and limited. Our contribution is also important, as studies of white-collar criminals so far has focused on case studies rather than statistical analysis of a larger sample. We find that the typically white-collar criminal is male, 46 years old, involved with first time crime of the amount of 30 million US dollars and convicted to 3 years of imprisonment. As a contradiction to previous literature on white-collar crime, we also find that they are not part of upper-class and higly education. On the contrary, even though mostly being leaders, they are not higly educated, but have a position that gives them access to money. Consequently, we also find that manipulation and fraud is the most common form of white-collar crime in Norway.Keywords: white-collar crime, characteristics of white-collar criminals, categories of business crime, descriptive statistics, jail sentences, archival analysis
Brief biographiesPetter Gottschalk is professor of information systems and knowledge management in the department of leadership and organizational behavior at BI Norwegian Business School. Dr. Gottschalk has published several books and research articles on crime and policing. He has been the CEO of several companies before becoming an academic.
2Cathrine Filstad is Associate Professor in organizational Learning and knowledge in the department of leadership and organizational behavior at BI Norwegian Business School. She publishes and teaches organizational learning, knowledge sharing and leadership in organizations and the police force. She has written several books on these topics.