Search results

There is an evolving literature on criminal entrepreneurship which situates it as a sub-topic of the organised crime literature and either mythologies and elevates the criminal entrepreneur to Mafioso status or ascribes it to being an activity carried out by criminal cartels; or else it trivialises and minimises it as being ‘White-Collar Criminality’. In reality, entrepreneurship pervades everyday criminal life as it pervades the everyday practices of policing. In this chapter, the author acknowledges the existence of a ‘Crimino-Entrepreneurial Interface’ populated by a cast of criminal actors including the ubiquitous ‘Businessman Gangster’. These criminally entrepreneurial actors operate within a specific milieu or ‘Enterprise Model of Crime’ and operate alongside the legitimate ‘Entrepreneurial Business Community’. Within the two conjoined systems, there is a routine exchange of interactions either parasitical or symbiotic and these coalesce to form an ecosystem of enterprise crime in which it is not only the ubiquitous criminal entrepreneur who is present but a veritable cast of entrepreneurially motivated criminal actors. As well as the established business community there is a parallel, alternative community which is situated in the so-called ‘Criminal Areas’ where the traditional criminal fraternity carry out their nefarious entrepreneurial activities. Within such areas, an underclass exists which provides the criminal workforce for organised crime. The traditional criminal ecosystem is the natural habitat for the police, and it is around this activity that police are traditionally organised. A perpetual cycle of crime is set up which requires policing, but this leaves an unpoliced void which the entrepreneurial criminals exploit. It is necessary to understand the criminal places and spaces exploited by Organised Crime and what roles other criminal actors and facilitators play in the enterprise model. It is also necessary to understand the so-called ‘Perverse Model of Policing’ which distorts and magnifies the true scale of the problem and to appreciate how Serious and Organised Crime corrupt and infiltrate the legitimate ‘upperworld’ before one can understand the true scale of entrepreneurialism in policing and criminal contexts.

In small-business-communities trust is important inter/intra family particularly in relation to familial dynamics. Seldom is mistrust or distrust examined in an academic context. In business families “Black-Sheep” often rebel against familial expectations by engaging in criminal activity. This is important because entrepreneurs are eulogised by society and as an institution, family business is venerated. The very idea that small business owners would knowingly engage in crime is anathema. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using retrospective ethnography and immersion techniques this quasi-longitudinal study of (dis)organized crime in a small-business-community (SBC) starts the bridging process.

There is an assumption that business crime is best accommodated under the rubric of white-collar-criminality typically regarded as an excusable middle-class crime compared to organized working-class crime. By focusing on the black-sheep of business families collectively this work illustrates how there may be a stronger link between organized-crime-groups and the local-business-community than previously assumed because a small minority of businessmen engage in the commission of ordinary crime by choice.

The methodology used is a limitation as is replicating it in other small-business-communities.

This study provides an alternative heuristic through which to understand the application black-sheep-thesis in business settings. The knowledge developed has practical implications for the investigation of crime in such communities and for researchers in the field.

This study extends knowledge of white-collar-criminality within the business domain.

This is an original and novel study which extends our knowledge and understanding of trust based issues in business settings and the SBC.

The stereotypes of the dodgy businessman and businessman gangster are established typologies in both the criminology and family business literature, but nevertheless, there is still an evident dearth of substantive studies on the topic. Family business scholars have begun to acknowledge the limited nature of such explorations of criminality in family firm businesses. The purpose of this article is therefore to review, synthesise and solidify existing research on this under-researched area of family business management.

This perspective article explores and synthesises the links between acquisitive crime, criminal predation and family business to address an identifiable research gap in the literature of criminology, entrepreneurship and family business. It examines the overlap between criminal activities and business practices, shedding light on how individuals in the family business community may become involved in criminal activities due to various factors, including coercion, addiction and financial gain.

This perspective highlights emerging research trends that have the potential to increase the knowledge about the “dark side” of family business.

Being a perspective paper this brief exploration of the literature can only cover a small cross section of the literature. A conceptual model emerges, which illustrates shared aspects of crimino-entrepreneurial identity between authentic entrepreneurs and criminals.

This perspective article scopes the extant literature covering the links between acquisitive crime, criminal predation and family business to help guide the direction of future research. The piece presents new perspectives on the intersection of acquisitive crime and family business, and its novelty lies in its synthesis of the disparate elements from the diverse literature to contribute to the said literature.

The purpose of this paper is to focus upon organized criminals as an enterprising community and as enterprising people. Organized crime is a global phenomenon that concentrates upon the development of both sustainable personal prosperity and criminal culture as they define it. Such criminal businesses and the business of criminality go far beyond simple economic and capitalist criteria and entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ability play a significant part in creating criminal wealth. Indeed, it is part of committed criminality. Whilst acknowledging the crime‐entrepreneurship nexus the literature seldom seeks to understand entrepreneurial behaviour practiced in a criminal context. This paper therefore examines entrepreneurial behaviour in criminals looking for useful theoretical perspectives and distilling key practices by seeking to understand entrepreneurial behaviour in organized criminals.

The methodological approach is a qualitative one and relies on cross disciplinary readings of the literatures of crime and entrepreneurship which are developed into a conceptual model for understanding entrepreneurial behaviour in any context. The key behavioural areas which the work concentrates upon are those of modus essendi, modus operandi and modus vivendi.

That crime and entrepreneurship are interconnected areas of human endeavour which both transcend the legal and illegal economies.

The paper is limited by its tentative and theoretical nature and by the methodology of cross disciplinary reading. Future studies are planned to test the tripartite behavioural model on real cases.

Viewing entrepreneurship (like criminality) as being a learned method of operating has serious practical implications because it concentrates upon behaviours and actions in specific contexts.

Linking this understanding to the related elements of modus vivendi and modus essendi creates a useful model for understanding entrepreneurship in any context.

As a social construct, entrepreneurship is portrayed as an unashamedly masculine endeavour. This forms the basis for much feminist research in entrepreneurship. Despite a sustained research effort in the field of gendered entrepreneurship research this polarised viewpoint remains under researched from the perspective of masculinity. Rather than perpetuate the polarity this short article aims to consider the concept of gendered entrepreneurial regimes as an explanatory variable.

Using documentary analysis techniques this article seeks to document the existence of a particular gendered local regime in the form of “Essex‐Boy culture”.

The findings although tentative indicate that as a recognised gendered local regime Essex‐Boy identity manifests itself physically at a conceptual, gendered, geographic, community and cultural level. Semiotically it can be expressed as a legitimate business identity, a criminal identity, a celebrity status, a political identity, as parody, caricature and as metaphor. It can be expressed as an ideology, a doxa, class position, a culture or as an initiating dream. It also exists at a narrative level via memoires, biographies, jokes or scripted insult.

Given that this is a preliminary study based on secondary documents there is clearly scope for other studies to be conducted into this interesting phenomenon.

The study has implications for what can be legitimately studied under the rubric of gendered entrepreneurial research.

This study is original in its exclusive use of documentary research/analysis to uncover gendered aspects of an under studied entrepreneurial regime.

This chapter introduces the two main topics of ‘entrepreneurial policing’ and ‘criminal entrepreneurship’ and begins in Section 1.1 by considering the concept and scope of entrepreneurial policing around which this monograph is organised. Its definition and ontological development are considered. Thereafter, the author briefly discuss what entrepreneurship is (and is not) and set out examples of entrepreneurship of interest to policing, including – ‘Corporate’ and ‘Team’ Entrepreneurship, ‘Intrapreneurship’, ‘Social Entrepreneurship and Animateurship’, ‘Civic Entrepreneurship’, and ‘Public Service Entrepreneurship’. The author then discusses why entrepreneurship is of critical importance to the police service and discuss worked examples. Having developed a basic understanding of the power and utility of entrepreneurship, then in more detail what the term entrepreneurial policing means and how it evolved in practice and in the academic literature are considered. In Section 1.2, the foundations of entrepreneurial policing considering its ontological and epistemological development from ‘New Public Management’ to ‘New Entrepreneurialism’ and also the influence of the merging literatures of ‘Criminal Entrepreneurship’ and ‘Entrepreneurial Leadership’ are critically examined. In Section 1.3, our consideration to include a more nuanced understanding of the what is referred to as the ‘Entrepreneurship–Policing Nexus’ including consideration of the influence of dyslexia on policing and crime and the power of the ‘Entrepreneurial’ and ‘Gangster’ dreams on entrepreneurial motivation and propensity are expanded. In Section 1.4, an attempt is made to identify who the stakeholders of this new policing philosophy are? Finally, in Section 1.5, the chapter takeaway points which both articulates and confirms the inherent importance of entrepreneurship in policing and criminal contexts are discussed and detailed.

This research paper aims to examine how organized criminals rescript their identities to engage with entrepreneurship discourse when authoring their biographies. From a sociological perspective, stereotypes and social constructs of the entrepreneur and the criminal are subjects of recurring interest. Yet, despite the prevalence of the stereotype of the entrepreneur as a hero-figure in the entrepreneurship literature and the conflation of the entrepreneur with the stereotype of the businessman, notions of entrepreneurial identity are not fixed with constructions of the entrepreneur as a rascal, rogue or villain being accepted as alternative social constructs.

The qualitative approaches of “biographical analysis” and “close reading” adopted help us draw out discursive strategies.

The main finding is that a particular genre of criminal biographies can be re-read as entrepreneur stories. The theme of nuanced entrepreneurial identities and in particular gangster discourse is under researched. In this study, by conducting a close reading of contemporary biographies of British criminals, the paper encounters self-representations of criminals who seek to author an alternative and more appealing social identity as entrepreneurs. That this re-scripting of personal biographies to make gangster stories conform to the genre of entrepreneur stories is of particular interest.

This study points to similarities and differences between criminal and entrepreneurial biographies. It also presents sociological insights into an alternative version of entrepreneurial identity and sociological constructions of the criminal as entrepreneur.

This research provides an insight into how criminals seek to legitimise their life-stories.

This research paper is of value in that it is the first to consider contemporary biographies of British criminals as entrepreneurship discourse. Understanding how criminal biographies and entrepreneur stories share similar socially constructed themes, storylines and epistemologies contribute to the development of entrepreneurship and sociological research by examining entrepreneurship in an unusual social setting.