Criminality and Business Strategy: Similarities and Differences explores what can be learned
from criminal organizations on four continents based on comparisons of their historical and
cultural origins chosen governance and power structures and business models. It discusses how
these contexts determined their applications of the principles and practice of effective but
amoral leadership and whether these lessons can be applied to legitimate business enterprises.
In this book John Zinkin and Chris Bennett argue that defining a crime is a contested issue and
that criminality can be viewed as a spectrum comprising a range of different types of crimes
the harms caused and the variety of punishments involved. They discuss the critical role of
the state in determining where criminality is perceived to sit on the crime continuum. The
authors delve into how the state and organized crime are natural competitors and how organized
crime and legitimate businesses are subject to many of the same internal and external strategic
considerations. They contend that the resulting similarities between criminality in organized
criminal organizations and legitimate businesses are greater than the differences and that the
differences are only in degree and not in kind. This thought-provoking study of criminality
will be of immense interest to professionals coaches consultants and academics interested in
the techniques and ethics of leadership. The book is in effect the result of an intellectual
journey of the authors from the ideas presented in their earlier book The Principles and
Practice of Effective Leadership to the issues in this book discussing important difficult
and contested subjects. The journey continues in their third book: The Challenge in Leading
Ethical and Successful Organizations.
