White-Collar Crime and the Public Sector: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Public Procurement Fraud

Description

Procurement is a critical government activity, yet very little scholarly attention is devoted to procurement fraud in public policy, public management, or public financial management research. While many publications focus on the stages of the procurement process and appropriate protocols to follow for successful procurements, the opportunities for exploitation of the process have not been as widely studied. Procurement fraud is similarly understudied in the white-collar crime literature, where attention has primarily been placed on corporate crime or political corruption. This book extends criminal justice and white-collar crime scholarship by using these literatures to frame public procurement fraud. Additionally, organizational behavior approaches are applied to public procurement fraud to explain possible motivations for this type of occupational crime. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide insights into the characteristics of individuals who abuse the procurement process for personal gain, and it offers some strategies for detecting and preventing further abuse. Original research is also presented and compares the offender-based and offense-based characteristics of the perpetrators of public procurement fraud with those of street and white-collar criminals. The intention of this book is to elevate the issue of public procurement fraud and to align it with criminal justice and white-collar crime scholarship. Preface Acknowledgments Contents List of Tables 1 Introduction 2 Public Procurement Overview Ensuring a Fair and Legal Process Local Government Regulation State Regulation Federal Regulation The Process and Its Vulnerabilities Describing the Process Identifying the Vulnerabilities in the Process References 3 Distinguishing Between Street and White-Collar Crime Street Crime A Definition A Description White-Collar Crime A Definition A Description References 4 Public Procurement Fraud What Is Public Procurement Fraud? A Definition A Description—Characteristics of the Criminal vs. the Crime A Description—Types of Procurement Fraud References 5 Applying Organizational Behavior Approaches to Public Procurement Fraud Pro–organizational Stewardship Theory Public Service Motivation Pro-individual Principal-Agent Theory Workplace Deviance Applying Cressey’s Fraud Triangle to Public Procurement Fraud References 6 A Study of Public Procurement Fraud Purpose of the Study A Brief Review of Street and White-Collar Crime Characteristics Research Design and Data Collection Article Selection Process Recording Data Elements Results and Discussion Status/Socio-Economic Class Gender Age Tenure Other Findings of Note Most Common Types of Fraud Elected vs. Appointed/Merit-Based Employees Level of Government The Importance of Whistleblowing Final Remarks About the Study References 7 Detecting and Preventing Public Procurement Fraud Current State of Detection Internal Controls Audits Whistleblowing Suggestions for Improving Detection Internal Controls Audits Whistleblowing Business Intelligence and Analytics Prevention Audits and Employee Training Professionalism and Certification Prosecution References 8 Conclusion and Directions for Future Research Directions for Future Research Concluding Remarks References Index