The Psychology of White-Collar Criminals
Yuriko Nakao / Reuters A researcher reflects on conversations with nearly 50 convicted executives about why they did what they did. EUGENE SOLTES Two leading executive headhunters once wrote a book called Lessons From the Top: The Search for America’s Best Business Leaders that celebrated 50 titans of industry. Readers were encouraged “to learn from and pattern themselves” after the leadership qualities displayed by these executives. Yet within a few years of the book’s 1999 publication, three of those 50 were convicted of white-collar crimes and headed to prison, and three more faced tens of millions of dollars in fines for illicit activity. It was an extraordinary rate of failure for executives once deemed the “very best—and most successful—business leaders in America.” I’ve spent much of the last seven years investigating why so many respected executives engage in white-collar crime. Why is it that fraud, embezzlement, bribery, and insider tradi...