Convention Need a solution for abstract management? All Academic can help! Contact us today to find out how our system can help your annual meeting. Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! Click here for more information.
Association: Name: AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY URL: http://www.asc41.com
Citation: URL: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p200078_index.html Direct Link: HTML Code:

Akers, Ronald. "A Social Learning Explanation of White Collar Crime: Revisiting an Old Analysis" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY, Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Georgia, Nov 13, 2007 <Not Available>. 2009-05-24 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p200078_index.html>

Akers, R. L. , 2007-11-13 "A Social Learning Explanation of White Collar Crime: Revisiting an Old Analysis" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY, Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Georgia <Not Available>. 2009-05-24 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p200078_index.html

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript Abstract: Abstract (192 words) I first applied social learning theory as a general explanation of all crime and deviance as an explanation of both corporate crimes against the public and embezzlement and other employee crimes against employers over thirty years ago and last updated it twenty years ago in Deviant Behavior: A Social Learning Approach (Akers, 1973; 1985). That analysis was based on the general principles of social learning theory and what was known about white-crime empirically at that time. In this paper, I update that social learning explanation based on the recent literature and knowledge in the area of white-collar crime and on my elaboration of the theory in the general SSSL model (Akers, 1998). I do not present original empirical data, and I do not review or describe specific cases or companies involved in white-collar offenses. My purpose is to outline how social learning theory, as a general theory of crime and deviance, has been and can continue to be applied to white-collar crime. I offer it for consideration by current scholars and researchers as a general perspective that has some value in understanding and explaining white-collar crime in a parsimonious and valid way. Extension of five pages from the paper My contention is that the social learning process and variables applies to white-collar crime as well as it does to other types and subtypes of crime. There is more to the overall learning process, but I have relied principally on four major concepts or sets of variables that operate in the social learning process: (1) differential association, (2) differential reinforcement, (3) definitions favorable and unfavorable, and (4) imitation or modeling (Akers et al., 1979; Akers, 1985; Akers, 1998). The relevant patterns of differential association for commission of occupational and corporate crime involve not only primary groups of family and friends but importantly business associates, co-workers, management, executives, and others in the workplace. In white-collar crime tangible monetary, economic, and job benefits are the primary set of positive reinforcers, but also the behavior is motivated by the actual or potential reward of getting the best of competitors, gaining market share, gaining approval and acceptance by some peers and colleagues, or maintaining the approval of co-conspirators or simply the social status and power that comes from succeeding in an important position. Negative reinforcement is a key process for some offenders who violate the law as a way of avoiding, escaping, or coping with (at least for a while) very difficult personal, family, or money problems or possible on-the-job aversive consequences of dismissal, demotion, reduction in compensation, or the displeasure of corporate superiors. The positive rewards and negative reinforcement are balanced off against the risks to one’s good reputation and standing, potential legal penalties, damage to one’s family, and other possible formal and informal punishment to be suffered if discovered. The definitions favorable to white-collar crime, seldom include radical or compelling ideology or definition of breaking laws governing corporate and occupation activities as positive or good acts. Rather, as is true for most criminal offenders, white-collar perpetrators utilize the whole range of neutralizations, rationalizations, and disclaimers that excuse or rationalize their offenses as necessary, everyone else is doing it , it not really unethical or criminal, or it is justifiable or excusable in some way. In the social learning analysis, while it is recognized that individuals may on their own think of them, such neutralizing definitions are seen as mainly developed and learned through association with others sharing and supporting such definitions and through negative reinforcement in which they function to forestall or offset one’s own self-reproach and guilt, protect one’s self-concept, or deflect the anticipated opprobrium of others. Such neutralizing definitions are central to understanding how respectable people in respected occupations can bring themselves to be guilty of white-collar crime. Imitation is more important in the initial acquisition and performance of novel behavior than in the maintenance or cessation of behavioral patterns once established, but it continues to have some effect in maintaining behavior. This holds true for white-collar crime. Modeling or imitation of other’s offending behavior in the organization or corporation may play a role when the person first enters into a position of trust that provides opportunity for crime, but plays a diminished role as one persists in offending or becomes involved in a continuing criminal conspiracy with other violators. The relationship of variables in the social learning process to factors in the social structure and context in the the SSSL (Social Structure Social Learning) Model (Akers, 1998) has direct relevance to the explanation of white collar crime. In the SSSL model the criminogenic factors in the social structure are hypothesized to have an indirect effect on individual conduct through their effect on the social learning process; that is, SSSL predicts that substantial amounts of the relationship between social structural factors and crime are mediated by the social learning variables. The structural variables relevant to corporate crime (“criminogenic environment”) include the structure of the market place, the competitiveness and other features of the economy, the corporate organization and culture, different degrees of pressure to circumvent the law for profit, and other institutional factors of the corporate entity or the sector of the national or international economy in which it operates (see Friedrichs, 1996; Rosoff et al., 2002; Coleman, 2006). The social structural variables are indicators of the macro-level and meso-level factors promoting and inhibiting crime (the “lures” and “oversight” emphasized by Shover and Hochstetler, 2005), while the social learning variables reflect the primary proximate causes of criminal behavior that mediate the relationship between social structure and criminal behavior.

Tracing the Political Process of Path-Breaking Changes in Social Insurance

Changing Welfare State Culture and Social Policy Reforms in Japan and Korea

Developing New Measures of Welfare State Change and Reform

Political and Policy Dynamics of Higher Education Governance and Finance Reform: The Shaping of the First State Postsecondary Education Voucher System