From the monastery to the prison: exploring the relationship between workaholism and fraud

Abstract

This paper draws on the story of the collapse B.P. Sayers, a 100 year old family-owned stock broking firm as a result of the fraudulent use of client’s money by the junior partner in the firm. The paper presents three competing stories of the closure of Sayers written in accordance with Bakhtin's notion of polyphony. These stories are used as a platform to discuss possible explanations for fraud. The stories clearly articulate some explanations which have received coverage hitherto in the literature on financial and moral scandals such as inappropriate succession and leadership failure in family business which will be discussed in brief. However, it is the explanation which emerges from an engagement with the third story which is particularly compelling, and leads to an investigation of the relationship between workaholism and fraud in organizations.