Facts or Knowledge? A Review of Private Internal Reports of Investigations by Fraud Examiners

Petter Gottschalk
Additional contact information
Petter Gottschalk: BI Norwegian Business School, Norway

International Journal of Management, Knowledge and Learning, 2018, vol. 7, issue 2, 165-185

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to reflect on the difference between facts and knowledge, as we suggest that knowledge is facts combined with interpretation, context, and reflection. The distinction is important when investigators search for causality. The reason for misconduct in organizations, and thus whom to blame, is dependent on a thorough interpretation and reflection on facts studied in the proper context. This article presents a sample of seventeen investigation reports by fraud examiners to illustrate the difference between facts and knowledge. When facts remain facts, then the blame game can easily occur. This article first presents the theory of convenience to explain financial misconduct in organizations, and the blame game hypothesis, before we introduce the sample. The purpose of this article is not to criticize generally the work that fraud examiners do in private internal investigations for their clients. Rather it intends to reflect upon the difference between facts and knowledge when it comes to reasons for deviance in organizations. Causality is difficult to establish, and it seems tempting to some fraud examiners to enter into the blame game to make sure that they draw conclusions from investigations that clients have paid for.

Keywords: knowledge management; fraud investigation; blame game; convenience theory; facts interpretation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.issbs.si/press/ISSN/2232-5697/7_165-185.pdf full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isv:jouijm:v:7:y:2018:i:2:p:165-158

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Management, Knowledge and Learning is currently edited by Kristijan Breznik

More articles in International Journal of Management, Knowledge and Learning from International School for Social and Business Studies, Celje, Slovenia
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alen Ježovnik ().