Why They Do It

Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal

De: Eugene Soltes

Narrado por: Johnny Heller, Eugene Soltes

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 50 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.

©2016 Eugene Soltes (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Interesting

So, do you buy into another person's reasoning for their thinking that led to their criminal behavior? This is an interesting look at how people and society think. Worth the read.

For the criminal justice and business professional

This is a book that should be in the hands of every criminal justice and business student.

The first part of the book explains the criminology of how white collar crime started. It brought back memories of studying Sutherland in my criminology class.

The last part of the book gives details and examples on some famous white color criminals. For example, Bernie Madoff was explained as a psychopath. He didn't have any empathy even when his son committed suicide. After his second son died of cancer, he was speaking on the phone with the author. After Madoff asked him to read the obituary, he then wanted to know what the daily interest rates are. The true makings of a psychopath.

The last chapter in the book is one of the best. It explains how business ethics studied in class differs and doesn't help in real life situations. This is because executives in the office do not have conflicting viewpoints to help them think through decisions as students in the classroom do.

Lastly, the author gives some examples of what could be done to companies when employees involves themselves in white-collar criminal activity.

Wide ranging, from psych studies to perps' words

This work covers quite a wide swath of business ethics, paired often and deftly with laws and case histories. It starts with a treatise on "why they do it," i.e., why humans do aberrant and illegal things, that is plodding in a few passages though always alright at least (or better), and improves as it moves to case histories. The cherry on top is the writings of various of the infamous perps on their motives and perceptions, paired with nice capsule recountings of their companies' stories. The assembled perp letters vary from (in my opinion) catalogs of energetic blame deflection and flagrant pilings-on of yet more self-aggrandizing and righteously aggrieved, dubious "realities" (Stanford), to echoes of the thrill of the clever whiz-kid unveiling ever-more abstruse financial tricks to accolades of the world, as they plunge onward (Fastow, and, to some degree, in his earlier trades-and-exchanges-innovating career phase, Madoff). We get to see step by step and often in their own words, just how these figures moved from ambitious performers to criminals. This transition is of central importance to me, as a professor teaching business ethics. It is not the headline, but the little incremental shifts that add up to the turnoff onto the wrong road. It was smart of the author to intuit that these personalities, shunted off their former glory-platforms into ill-repute, would have strong motives to again alight on a platform (the correspondence behind this book) to get attention and explain themselves. Parts of this will be familiar to readers with a history of studying the fraud and ethics genres and the financial press. But the whole is a good refresher with some fresh angles on things and people I have already scrutinized. The perps in all cases shed bits of light I hadn't seen elsewhere. The author is quite thoughtful in exploring the fuzzy edges of laws as these play out in fast-breaking business situations. The distance between an innovative solution that is lawful or not, can be narrow, and this is masterfully walked through.

Nails it

Had a situation that is heavily documented. 18 chapters. This book explains the story in how they got away with it.
Very good. Highly recommended.

Superb Book and Author

Brilliant, fascinating book, apparently written before the author became a professor and at none other than Harvard. The book is a deep dive into the historic timeline of White Collar crime written into law and ultimately considered as egregious and heinous as physical crimes ,such as burglary and robbery, once were. Eugene Soltes provides hours of insight into the behavior of well known corporate leaders at the pinnacle of their careers who have achieved their dreams beyond even their own imagination and land in prison for their own decisions they never saw coming. Soltes, with his measured humility and intelligence, rightfully wins the trust of these men while they are in prison and after some are released and not only shares those conversations but more importantly deconstructs them so that even the subjects are more informed of how they made those famous wrong turns. The book made me feel how fortunate one is to live within the latter part of this 100-year period when ethics and morality have evolved. We each have an opportunity to truly participate and make a difference in the outcome of small decisions that can result in big issues. I heard the author on a podcast and immediately purchased the Audible format. Highly recommended. Great book, brilliant man and innumerable messages and lessons to take away.

An interesting look at white collar crime

Eugene Soltes examines the problem of white collar crime--what makes some of the most successful and respected businessmen in the country (and the world, but his focus is mainly on the US) commit financial crimes that destroy their careers and land them in jail. He takes a hard and detailed look at how our views of white collar crime have evolved, as well as why white collar criminals do it.

The most fascinating parts of the book are the profiles of major white collar criminals, and the ways in which they justified their crimes to themselves. What I found a bit hard to swallow is the Enron story, in which the company officers are presented as succumbing to the desire to be clever and successful, with no sense that they were going to be hurting anyone. This would be easier to take if we didn't have audio of Enron traders laughing about "Grandma Millie."

So, please. I think there's a lot of good work here that Sontes has done. I think he does add a lot to our understanding of what lets successful businessmen (and he says that even now it really is almost all men who get caught in this trap) get drawn into white collar crime when they have no need to do it. I don't regret at all any of the time I spent listening to this audiobook, or the money spent on it.

But I'd like to sit down with him for a long chat about some parts of it.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

Interesting Book

Why They Do It was a fascinating read. I especially liked when the author interviewed convicted criminals about why they made the decisions they did and how they justified those decisions to themselves. It also was an interesting look into the white collar crimes that have happened in America. There was a lot more that I wished was in the book, and I don’t always think that the author was accurate in his assessment on the motivations for some of the convicted criminals (he seemed to give quite a few convicted criminals the benefit of the doubt when it came to them making bad mistakes which lead to their crimes), but overall I found this book extremely interesting and great learning tool.

Overall Rating: 4.25 Stars. The writing and narration was good and made it easy to listen to the book. Johnny Heller was a good narrator and his reading of this book was smooth. I liked the case studies the author presented, but I think he didn’t quite get to the true heart of why people commit white collar crimes. All in all, I recommend this book.

interesting

not once did I find a groundbreaking analysis to "why they do it" just a bunch of people who did do it, in which most felt they were not bad apples. there was a chapter about the psychological capacity to "why they do it" but not necessarily anything that I could distinctly relate to the fraud triangle.

insight into the slippery slope of fraud

the book provides an insight into some of the biggest fraud cases of recent history. but more importantly it describes how these executives fell into the clutches of fraud before they realized it was too late

Overall an informative look at white collar crime

The best thing that this book provided me with was a better understanding of the complexities and issues with studying white collar crime. The only issue I found with the book was the harsh characterization of other forms of crime.