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Accounting can affect and determine power relations. Previous studies have emphasized how accounting has been used by “central” powers; less is known from the perspective of “local” power and its capacity to resist and protect its interests. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the Archbishop’s Seminary of Siena (ASS) (local) and Roman ecclesiastic institutions (central). This study contributes to filling the existing gap in the literature regarding how accounting could be used as a tool for deception in local/central power relations.

The research methodology is based on a case study and archival research. The ASS case study was analyzed through its archive, made up for the most part of accounting books. As to the approach adopted, the authors used the Foucault framework to observe power relations in order to identify possible ways in which accounting can be employed as a factor of deception.

Power relations between the ASS and Roman ecclesiastic institutions were maintained through a system of reporting that limited the influence of the ecclesiastical power of Rome over the Seminary’s administration and control. The relationship thus runs contrary to the findings in previous studies. The accounting system was managed as a factor of deception in favor of local interests and the limitation of central ecclesiastic power.

This study contributes to enhancing the existing literature on governmentality, proposing a different perspective in which power relations are based on the use of accounting. The Foucaldian approach demonstrates its validity, even though the power relations under consideration have the unusual feature of occurring within the context of religious institutions.

This study on the ASS has allowed the identification of two relevant points: the local/central dichotomy is consistent with the logic of power relations as theorized by Foucault, even in cases where it highlights the role of a local power in limiting the flow of information to a central one; and the ASS accounting system was used as a factor of deception.

The purpose of this paper is to define workplace victimization as any behavior that impairs employees’ basic psychological needs and explores the mutually interactive association between trait self-deception; emotional neglect, especially by supervisors, and workplace victimization.

Workplace victimization is identified as a pervasive problem in organization. This paper zeroes in on self-deception and emotional neglect as two possible antecedents of workplace victimization, explores the genesis of the two concepts and analyzes their conceptual relationship with each other and with workplace victimization. Based on the conceptual analysis, it identifies the lack of intentionality as a common element in both constructs and identifies a set of possible frameworks linking self-deception, emotional neglect and workplace victimization for future research.

This paper explores four possible frameworks to model the expected association while advocating for investigation of these given models to check whether one has considerable expository success than other by either connecting or disassociating these two constructs.

The amount of linkage between self-deception and emotional neglect at workplace is worth investigating, and this research paper presents several possible models that might help to focus and organize the future workplace investigations.

The current paper postulates that supervisors’ and subordinates’ ability to display appropriate leadership and follower behavior and interaction will be impaired if they are high in trait self-deception and have been the victim or perpetrators of emotional neglect.

In the workplace, self-deceptive individuals display behaviors such as conscientiousness, resilience, optimism and competitiveness that are considered characteristics of good employees and, hence, are more likely to be promoted to supervisory positions, where emotional neglect of others such as subordinates becomes more pertinent.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the targets, strategies, and topics of deception employed in the workplace among part‐time service workers.

A taxonomy of deception strategies is used to content analyze 259 narrative accounts of part‐time student employees over two work shifts using Cohen's kappa to measure interrater reliability. Chi‐square analysis is used to determine significant differences between deception strategies and deception targets.

Employees overwhelmingly concealed information and lied primarily to supervisors and customers. Employees deceived in order to cover or protect emotions, evade work, cover mistakes or policy violations, and mislead customers in order to increase sales, commission, or gratuities.

Determining the most salient strategies employed becomes clearer if the deception account describes or reveals the employee's motivation to deceive. Future research should consider motivation of the deceiver and might compare the deception strategies of part‐time and full‐time employees of varying levels of skill, organizational commitment, and role conflict.

This study provides rich examples of the ethically compromising situations in which young workers find themselves, discusses the impact of workplace structures on deception and the importance of socializing young workers on honest organizational practices.

As young workers enter the workforce they are confronted with opportunities to deceive and they do so for a wide variety of reasons. Little work has been done within the organizational context investigating the most common deception strategies employed or the contextual factors influencing the use of deception among full‐time employees much less young, part‐time employees.

Drawing on the literature from cognitive neuroscience and auditing research on professional skepticism (PS), this paper identifies new research questions, determinants, and theories that may resolve current problem areas in PS research. We identify the following PS research areas that neuroscientific perspectives can potentially improve: 1) theory, 2) trust, 3) trait and state skepticism, 4) deception/fraud detection, and 5) skeptical judgment and action. The paper concludes with a discussion of the critical question of whether integrating a neuroscientific perspective in PS research is worthwhile and provides further direction for future research.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and develop a model which examines the effects of political skill on an individual’s intent to deceive.

Data were obtained through a survey research design (n=273). The sample consisted of college students. A covariance-based structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the data.

Individual’s with high levels of political skill had more deception confidence and less deception guilt. Increased deception confidence was shown to be positively related to perceptions of deception success which is turn is positively associated with deception intent. The factors duping delight and deception guilt were also found to be related to deception intent.

This research furthers deception research by using a strong behavioral framework to determine the motivational influences on an individual’s politically motivated intent to deceive. In doing so, this research identifies factors which contribute to the general understanding of politically motivated deception intent. However, caution must be applied when making external generalizations outside of the sample of college students.

There are practical applications to this research as well. In general those who are highly politically skilled seem to have a stronger intention to deceive. At best, these findings can begin to contribute to the understanding of who we can trust and who we should be wary of. At worst, these findings can help us know who we should turn to when we need to deceive and manipulate others without them catching on. Perhaps this is why we love the rock-star politicians on the side of the isle but loathe the rock-star politicians on the other side of the isle. If we are able to assess the level of political skill in our friends, co-workers, bosses, politicians, etc., we may be keener in picking up on the signals of deception.

One final area of future research which can build on the concepts presented in this study is the area of social and political power at the macro level. Though the focus of this study is the individual, it is possible that political skill and deceptive communications play an important part of power relationships in wide range of stable institutional systems. Future research should examine to what extent an individual’s political skill and deception abilities can influence society at large.

This research extends research on political skill as it explores the effect of political skill in a new context. This research identifies an important facet of why some individuals are better able than others to successfully deceive and may help explain some of the variability in the inability to consistently detect deception efforts.

This study takes the position that the concept of fraud is socially constructed. Moreover, it asks why and how different understandings of fraud have emerged. Insights from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003; Lakoff, 2002, 2004, 2009) are used to analyze language revealing dominant worldviews and metaphors regarding fraud. The research method is a case study (Yin, 2014), and the analytical approach used parallels the one described in O’Dwyer (2004). The research setting is a report issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which provides a context to study different understandings of fraud due to the report’s divided nature. The analysis reveals three alternative worldviews, representing different assumptions about reality, that are at the root of the different understandings of fraud. These worldviews also lead to the usage of different conceptual metaphors which allow the commissioners to interpret facts in a manner that supports each worldview’s assumptions. The paper also concludes by providing a nuanced and critical examination of the results of the commission concerning its understanding of fraud.

This paper examines the role of professional associations, governmental agencies, and international accounting and auditing bodies in promulgating standards to deter and detect fraud, domestically and abroad. Specifically, it focuses on the role played by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the US Government Accounting Office (GAO), and other national and foreign professional associations, in promulgating auditing standards and procedures to prevent fraud in financial statements and other white‐collar crimes. It also examines several fraud cases and the impact of management and employee fraud on the various business sectors such as insurance, banking, health care, and manufacturing, as well as the role of management, the boards of directors, the audit committees, auditors, and fraud examiners and their liability in the fraud prevention and investigation.

When FECS spins out of human intervention and regulatory control, then it can easily harm and constrain the markets as it happened on Black Friday of October 1929, resulting in the Great Depression, and the September–October 2008 Financial Crisis, when some 17 mega global investment banks ran out of control and lost close to trillion US dollars in market capitalization. This chapter defines, analyzes, classifies, and morally assesses occupational and corporate fraud, corruption and money-laundering, and their other evil forms. When we allow our choices to be driven by passion, choosing thereby to ignore or fail to investigate outcomes, the results are too often flawed and unintended, as the cases of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Freddie Mac, and Fannie May that collapsed around September–October 2008 would attest. While we should condemn abuses within the FECS, one can also seek to understand the origins and originating systems of fraud, corruption, and various forms of deceptions and chicanery, and search for remedial strategies for eradicating these ills of FECS. Several contemporary market cases of fraud, corruption, and bribery will be identified to illustrate the contents of this chapter.

With the widespread use of online communications, users are extremely vulnerable to a myriad of deception attempts. This study aims to extend the literature on deception in computer-mediated communication by investigating whether the manner in which popularity information (PI) is presented and media richness affects users’ judgments.

This study developed a randomized, within and 2 × 3 between-subject experimental design. This study analyzed the main effects of PI and media richness on the imitation magnitude of veracity judges and the effect of the interaction between PI and media richness on the imitation magnitude of veracity judges.

The manner in which PI is presented to people affects their tendency to imitate others. Media richness also has a main effect; text-only messages resulted in greater imitation magnitude than those viewed in full audiovisual format. The findings showed an interaction effect between PI and media richness.

The findings of this study contribute to the information systems literature by introducing the notion of herd behavior to judgments of truthfulness and deception. Also, the medium over which PI was presented significantly impacted the magnitude of imitation tendency: PI delivered through text-only medium led to a greater extent of imitation than when delivered in full audiovisual format. This suggests that media richness alters the degree of imitating others’ decisions such that the leaner the medium, the greater the expected extent of imitation.