Enterprise theory
Definition
A theoretical framework that analyses organised crime as a rational business enterprise responding to market conditions. Associated with criminologist Dwight Smith, who argued that legal and illegal businesses operate on the same spectrum of enterprise, competing for customers in markets where legal supply is restricted.
Related terms
- Corporate crime
- Illegal acts committed by or on behalf of a corporate organisation for the organisation's benefit. Distinct from occupational crime because the wrongdoing...
- Cybercrime
- Offences where a computer network is the tool or the target. Tool-based cybercrime includes fraud, harassment, and intellectual property theft conducted online....
- Neutralisation techniques
- The vocabulary of justifications identified by Sykes and Matza (1957) by which offenders deny the wrongfulness of their acts: denial of injury,...
- Organised crime
- A structured group of three or more persons that operates continuously, with the aim of committing serious offences for material benefit, and...
- White-collar crime
- Crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation (Sutherland, 1939). The category covers...
Explained in
- Organised, White-Collar, Corporate, and CybercrimeA theoretical framework that analyses organised crime as a rational business enterprise responding to market conditions. Associated with criminologist Dwight S...