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

by Eugene Soltes (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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What drives wealthy and powerful people to white-collar crime? Why They Do It is a breakthrough look at the dark side of the business world.

From the financial fraudsters of Enron, to the embezzlers at Tyco, to the insider traders at McKinsey, to the Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, the failings of corporate titans are regular fixtures in the news. In Why They Do It, Harvard Business School professor Eugene Soltes draws from extensive personal interaction and correspondence with nearly fifty former executives as well as the latest research in psychology, criminology, and economics to investigate how once-celebrated executives become white-collar criminals.

White-collar criminals are not merely driven by excessive greed or hubris, nor do they usually carefully calculate costs and benefits before breaking the law. Instead, Soltes shows that most of the executives who committed crimes made decisions the way we all do-on the basis of their intuitions and gut feelings. The trouble is that these gut feelings are often poorly suited for the modern business world where leaders are increasingly distanced from the consequences of their decisions and the individuals they impact.

The extraordinary costs of corporate misconduct are clear to its victims. Yet, never before have we been able to peer so deeply into the minds of the many prominent perpetrators of white-collar crime. With the increasing globalization of business threatening us with even more devastating corporate misconduct, the lessons Soltes draws in Why They Do It are needed more urgently than ever.

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330 pages
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English
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PublicAffairs
Publication date

October 11, 2016
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13263 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"[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

About the Author

Johnny Heller, winner of numerous Earphones and Audie Awards, was named a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013 and he has been named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine.

Eugene Soltes is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research focuses on how leaders can lose their way and gray zone managerial practices. His research has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Financial Times. Professor Soltes teaches in Harvard Business School's executive education programs and is the recipient of the Charles M. Williams Award for Outstanding Teaching. He received his PhD and MBA from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business and an AM in statistics, AB in economics from Harvard University.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01IMZ5AVS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ PublicAffairs; 1st edition (October 11, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 11, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 13263 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 330 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1541774175

Best Sellers Rank: #356,129 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #65 in Biographies of White Collar Crime
- #80 in Business Ethics (Kindle Store)
- #170 in White Collar Crime True Accounts

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4.4 262 ratings

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Eugene Soltes is the Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research on corporate malfeasance has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, and Bloomberg News. Professor Soltes teaches in Harvard Business School’s executive education programs and is the recipient of the Charles M. Williams Award for Outstanding Teaching. He received his PhD and MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and his AM in statistics and AB in economics from Harvard University.

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Beach Town Reader

Insightful

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2023

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Not a quickie listical book. This author goes in depth on how people can find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Reads like a thriller novel but is oh so real. If you are an individual investor or an employee of any type and you're wondering where you fall on the ethics spectrum, this book will be insightful.

2 people found this helpful

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JU

Deeply insightful, sometimes disturbing peek into white collar crime

Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2021

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This book is a super insightful look into the minds and techniques of people convicted of major white collar fraud. Through interviews conducted over several years, the author tries to put together a tapestry of reasons and circumstances that make some people commit major fraud. Among the most disturbing revelations is that it always starts small, so small that it doesn't look like fraud. A small misplaced booking entry to meet the quarter's goals as an example. And it grows from there.

It reminded of what Clay Christensen, another HBS professor, said "“it's easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.”

The book is also stark reminder that there is a lot more fraud than gets caught and convicted.
The interviewees seem to have made deep and startling confessions to the author, no doubt the result of his excellent interviewing skills. It gives us a good glimpse on how they actual think ( then and after being convicted)

2 people found this helpful

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Ian Mann

These are some of the fineist minds in the world who came to Harvard to become great business leaders

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2018

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In 1939, Edwin Sutherland, a distinguished and influential sociologist and author then most popular university textbook on criminology, changed understanding of crime. He asserted that belief that crime was restricted to murder, assault, and burglary, largely committed by individuals in the lower social classes, was misleading and incorrect.
Based on public criminal records, most serious crime was being committed instead, by society’s most well-known and respected business leaders. Sutherland coined the term: “white-collar crime.”
An example he presented was of a grocery store executive who embezzled $600,000 (worth over $10m today,) in just one year. This was 6 times the entire amount from five hundred robberies that occurred at the same chain of stores during the year.
Professor Eugene Soltes is a Harvard business professor who has based the conclusions of this book on written communication and visits with 48 former executives who were now in prison. These people had overseen some of the most significant corporate failures in history. These communications more conversational and casual and the subjects provided very different explanations than they had in court.
Historically, criminologist and society at large have, believed that criminality stemmed from psychological aberration. Some thought it might be due excessive greed or ambition or a faulty analysis of the risk to reward involved.
This book was written with Prof. Soltes’ students in mind. These are some of the fineist minds in the world who came to Harvard to become great business leaders, certainly not publicly humiliated, business and family destroying criminals. More than 2 dozen have though.
To get the most out this book and even this article, to what would you attribute succumbing to white collar crime? Then consider that for all the suggestions above, there is little concrete evidence or support.
Surprisingly little was understood about the choices that led to these people’s downfall.
What the author found was these white-collar criminals spend surprisingly little effort thinking about the consequences of their actions. “They seem to have reached their decisions to commit crimes with little thought or reflection,” his investigations confirm.
This was largely because they never really felt that the decisions were actually harmful to themselves or other real people. Stealing money from someone’s pocket involves a high degree of intimacy, these executives never need to get close—physically or psychologically—to their victims.
“While the aggregate costs are difficult to assess precisely, one estimate placed the annual cost of financial fraud in the United States at nearly $400 billion,” says Soltes. With such significant consequences, it is not surprising that business schools, and businesses teach “business ethics” as one means of trying to address this problem.
But if the cause is misdiagnosed the remedy will not work. Soltes sees the cause as very different to much that I have studied at university or read about. “There is an implicit—and flawed—assumption that participants would employ the same decision-making process they used in the classroom if they faced the same predicament at some point in their own future.”
Only twenty-three seconds after hearing a report of the problem at Goldman Sachs a former MD of McKinsey Rajat Gupta called an associate Rajaratnam and divulged this news. Rajaratnam sold his position in Goldman the following day before the news was public and avoided losing $3 million. Gupta neither no money from this at all, but served a prison sentence for this crime. One would have expected person widely lauded for his thoughtful leadership and deep strategic mind not to have made such a foolish and criminal decision.
In seconds before the call, he do some clever calculation that showed that the benefits of providing this information to Rajaratnam outweighed the expected costs. He actedon his imperfect intuition.
Would you commit a crime so instinctively that has potential harm to others and yourself?
In our day-to-day lives we tend to rely on initial and often unsatisfactory intuitive judgments, called “blinds spots,” by psychologists Bazerman and Tenbrunsel. When the big moral challenge comes, we will rise to the occasion, right.
It’s a public holiday (as is the time of writing this!) and you are driving on the highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria. You are listening to energy pumping music as you weave between the cars. Then you notice you are driving at 132 kph in a 120 zone. But you are in a great mood, your car in as great condition and so is the highway. And a lot of other motorists are also driving above the speed limit. So, you continue.
You could be involved in an accident at that speed in which your passenger, your life partner is maimed and the occupants of the other vehicles and killed or severely injured.
Did you have criminal intent? The court will and so will the families of the victims.
What would stop you? Seeing the traffic police. Seeing a fresh accident. You partner imploring you to slow down -NOW!
What made for that bad decision and what stopped it? When everyone around you is doing it is just, well, seems okay. When there is no one to tell you forcefully that what you are doing is wrong and dangerous, doing it is just, well, seems okay.
Just ask Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco who one of the highest-paid CEOs in the world who was convicted for embezzling nearly $100m.
Mark Whitacre was a senior executive of ADM. It was his wife, Ginger who horror when h mentioned he was on the negotiating team involved in negotiating international price-fixing that shocked him into the realization of his criminal involvement. “It was a way for me to separate from a culture that I had fallen into... She felt like she was losing me.”
Do you have a Ginger?

9 people found this helpful

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Kyle Welch

This is a fun book

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2016

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Don't waste any more time reading reviews. If you are looking at this book on Amazon, you are likely the type of person that would love it. The book is incredibly well written and moreover, well researched. After reading it, you will be surprised with the knowledge you walk away with from such an entertaining read.

I have found prior efforts in this literature to offer knee-jerk platitudes as the causal mechanisms in these crimes, providing the most obvious and uninsightful observations. Most books and articles read like a child story book plot when relating these stories.

Eugene Soltes has done something unique with this book. Its unique approach becomes evident when you review the references and footnotes. This is not only the most comprehensive study on white-collar crime; but a thoughtful weaving of how it relates to multiple academic disciplines. This book is obviously a labor of love for Eugene Soltes--that is the only way to explain how well this book and ideas have been put together.

Looking forward to seeing what he does next.

24 people found this helpful

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T.C.

Tough start but interesting finish

Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2018

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Agree with other reviews that the first third of book on why folks do corporate fraud is a slog. The rest where get into the stories and interviews is worth the wait.

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Larry

Important, interesting, and easy to read.

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2016

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Prof. Soltes has written an important book which will help people think about and understand the nature and causes of white-collar crime.
Journalists often argue that all business schools should teach ethics. It seems obvious that analysts, directors, and managers need to understand how human nature, competitive pressures, and a lack of clear guidelines can lead to potentially disastrous choices. But how do you teach adults to be honest? How do you teach someone to not cross an undefined line?
Prof. Soltes provides an answer by describing the evolution of white collar crime and a narrative in the words of those who have been convicted of it. “Why They Do It” provides a framework and examples which the next generation of business leaders can learn from.
The book is an easy to read history with vivid relatable examples. It should be required reading for all managers.

20 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Muito bem escrito, com fatos e histórias reais.

Reviewed in Brazil on October 14, 2023

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Muito útil para entender os processos que levam o homem a cometer fraudes.

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Cliente Amazon

Molto interessante

Reviewed in Italy on January 6, 2024

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Assolutamente un must read per tutti i CEOs, e coloro che ricoprono posizioni apicali - e non - in azienda.

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Camelia

Brilliant book, received just in time.

Reviewed in Canada on April 5, 2020

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I strongly recommend it to everyone.

Parth Wagh

Thought provoking and enriching experience!

Reviewed in India on July 2, 2019

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It’s well thought and detailed analysis of psychology of white collar criminals.
It’s good analysis of crime and criminals with society at background.

One person found this helpful

Andrea A

Excellent book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2018

Verified Purchase

Excellent book, a must read for any executive. Informative and engaging. Five stars.

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