ORGANIZATIONAL OFFENDING AND NEOCLASSICAL CRIMINOLOGY - CHALLENGING THE REACH OF A GENERAL-THEORY OF CRIME

This article examines and critiques Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime, with particular respect to its applicability to organ izational offending We question their views that the theory is adequat ely general and that typologies of crime are therefore unnecessary for criminological theory. Gottfredson and Hirschi have employed the case of white-collar crime to support their arguments, but they have const rained the test of their theory by focusing on the white-collar offens es that most resemble conventional crime. When organizational offendin g is included in white-collar crime, empirical and theoretical limitat ions of their project emerge. These limitations include the matters of defining and counting the phenomena of interest, the nature of the in terest that commonly underlies them, and the role of opportunity in th em. A satisfactory theory of organizational offending requires an adeq uate account of all these matters and will look substantially differen t from Gottfredson and Hirschi's theory of crime.