Knowledge Management in Private Investigations of White-Collar Crime

The activity of private investigations by fraud examiners is a business of lawyers, auditors and other professionals who investigate suspicions of financial crime by white-collar criminals. Private investigations represent an interesting and unique field of knowledge management research for several reasons. A possible white-collar crime has occurred, and examiners are to figure out what, how, who and why. It is a puzzle of information pieces that has to be solved. If one piece is missing in a puzzle of thousands of pieces, the crime will never be solved. Second, knowledge cannot be shared freely. Knowledge has to be applied in a sequence of investigative steps, where witnesses and suspects are involved to the extent that the investigation makes progress. Colleagues in the firm and executives in the client organization do only get to know about a current investigation to the extent that they have a role to play in it. A senior investigating person plays the role of a knowledge manager, who monitors information flows. Only when the private investigation is completed, is knowledge from the case to be shared in the broader field of stakeholders and spectators.