RESEARCHER

Occupational and Corporate Crime
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Occupational and Corporate Crime
Among the theoretical challenges faced by researchers is the development of an acceptable definition of the occupational and corporate crime. Corporate crimes are those committed by an organization with a separate entity with the aim of making a profit, while occupational crimes refer to those that are incurred by workers against the company. The main characteristic of corporate crime is that a person from the elite class or one with authority commits it in the course of their activities (Gottschalk & Gunnesdal, 2018). Additionally, although corporate crime is defined as one committed on behalf of the organization, it changes to corporate crime when one does it for private benefits. This subtle distinction between the definition of occupational crime and corporate crime makes it challenging for researchers to advance their investigations on occupational and corporate crime as a single field.
Lack of research on the two fields should however not be blamed over the confusion between the two crimes. A researcher can address this issue and validate his or her research in a specific way. In particular, since occupational and corporate crime contain numerous elements and causes, this crime should be evaluated from a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective (Van Erp, 2018). For example, insights from various fields, such as business, political science, psychology, and sociology, should be used to advance studies on occupational and corporate crime.

These fields are relevant since they relate to organization science, which is a discipline with a rich tradition of analyzing delinquency as well as deviance within an organizational context. Organization science helps to understand delinquencies or evil actions like theft, falsifying records, fraud and so forth that happen in a corporate setting (Van Erp, 2018). Therefore, for a researcher to advance the study on occupational and corporate crime, he or she has to look at the offense from an organization science perspective.
References
Gottschalk, P., & Gunnesdal, L. (2018). White-Collar Crime Research. White-Collar Crime in the Shadow Economy, 1-14. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-75292-1_1
Van Erp, J. (2018). The Organization of Corporate Crime: Introduction to Special Issue of Administrative Sciences. Administrative Sciences, 8(3), 1-12. doi:10.3390/admsci8030036