The Dialectics of White‐Collar Crime: The Anatomy of the Savings and Loan Crisis and the Case of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan Association

In: The American journal of economics and sociology, Band 57, Heft 4, S. 423-449

Abstract

Abstract TWO perspectives prevail in analyses of the savings and loan industry's crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s: on one hand are claims of individual fraud and greed; on the other are arguments focusing on organizational factors, particularly the deregulated environment in which lax or nonexistant oversight encouraged "collective embezzelment." Both approaches rely on a narrow conceptualization of the concept of white‐collar crime that focuses on identification of the static dimensions that differentiate white‐collar crime from other crimes. We apply Schlegel and Weis‐burd's (1993) notion of white‐collar crime as more of an interactive process than a set of unique defining factors by combining a theoretical focus on the state's policy‐making process with an analysis of organizational and occupational crime to analyze the role the state may play in creating the structural environment facilitating those behaviors. We analyze the case of Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan Association to examine the behavioral effects of implementing a state policy of deregulation. The case suggests that state policy may not only regulate and restrict behavior, but actually contain defeating incentives that create corporate behaviors contradicting the policy's intention. This points to the limitation of state theory in its focus on de jure policy creation as opposed to de facto policy implementation and its behavioral and structural consequences. Finally, we suggest that organizational crimes may result not only from circumventing or violating laws that must be enforced; they may also derive from contradictions contained in the policies of state projects themselves. As such, organizational crimes and deviant behavior may be better understood as unintended consequences of the dialectics of state projects.