| This dissertation describes and analyzes support given to law violation within a major corporation. The law violation in question is fraud in the form of patterned overselling of commercial credit information to customers. The corporation is Dun and Bradstreet, the nation's largest provider of credit information about other corporations.;Using in-depth interviews, analysis of secondary documents including court reports, and newspaper and television stories, the dissertation establishes that overselling was normalized within Dun and Bradstreet. In particular, routine business practices existed alongside a culture of misrepresentation within the corporation. Attention is also directed to the social conditions which allowed a small group of whistle-blowers to resist overselling and, with time, to go public with evidence of the wrongdoing. The consequences of whistle-blowing are examined for both the individuals and for Dun and Bradstreet.;The dissertation advances three major contributions. Role-identity theory establishes that compliance with corporate misrepresentation and whistle-blowing both are traceable to role-support within situated organizational contexts. This perspective is developed through the use of the concept of "identity-frames." It is further demonstrated that whistle-blowing is better conceptualized as a social rather than a psychological act. The dissertation also advances sociological knowledge about white collar crime by focusing on a major and important episode of corporate deviance. |
