Coleman, James W. (1947–)

JAMES WILLIAM Coleman in 2003 was a professor of sociology at California Polytechnic State University, San Louis Obispo. Coleman received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1975 and is a widely respected scholar in several distinct areas of research. These include the sociology of white-collar crime, the sociology of social problems, and the sociology of drug use. Other research areas investigated by Coleman include social foundations of Western Buddhism as well as the world system's political economy. His research on white-collar crime has been published in prestigious academic journals such as the American Journal of Sociology and Social Problems.

He is probably most well known as the author of The Criminal Elite: The Sociology of White-Collar Crime, a book that is in its fourth edition. Additionally, Coleman's work has appeared in edited books on white-collar crime, including Kip Schlegel and David Weisburd's White-Collar Crime Reconsidered and Neal Shover and John Paul Wright's Crimes of Privilege: Readings in White-Collar Crime. Coleman has been invited to present his research at numerous[Page 182] national meetings, including Indiana University's 1990 Sutherland Conference on White-Collar Crime, where he reviewed the field's theories of white-collar crime beginning with Sutherland until the 1990s. Coleman's own theory of white-collar crime was initially developed in a 1987 article, “Toward an Integrated Theory of White-Collar Crime.” In this seminal article, he argues that both wealth and success are common human goals. In the world of business, these factors contribute to a belief system referred to by Coleman as the culture of competition. Coleman's theory specifies that the culture of competition interacts with the motivations of individual offenders and subsequently results in the acts of white-collar crime.

To better understand white-collar crime and therefore prevent it, Coleman suggests that researchers focus on larger, macro-level factors such as capitalism, as well as factors unique to specific organizational settings, including various subcultures that may develop among employees. Most importantly, Coleman is an advocate for including micro(pertaining to individuals) and macro(pertaining to organizations) level factors for a more complete understanding of white-collar crime.