The Act of Economic Crime: The Logic of Dirty Business and Normative Restrictions in the Swedish Restaurant Industry

Why do respected businessmen get involved in economic crime? This is the classic question posed by researchers of economic crime. In this article both the economic and normative conditions on how it is to run a business are described, exemplified by data from the Swedish restaurant industry. The data were collected through semistructured interviews from 119 restaurateurs and 12 authority representatives. The data are interpreted with three hypotheses as guidelines: the hypothesis of 'differential association', the hypothesis of 'cross-pressure' and the hypothesis of 'the first generation of immigrants', which was formulated as a consequence of Merton's 'strain theory'.