Author Description

Despite the huge body of literature on business administration, business law and risk management, and even with the growing awareness of the implications of unethical corporate conduct, Dirty Business is still largely a taboo subject only whispered about behind closed doors. After all, when one suspects someone in an organisation is taking a bung or defrauding a company, it's not exactly a topic that's commercially prudent or safe to openly discuss. Yet it's exactly what professionals and senior managers should be able to identify and prevent. But having high intelligence and a good business or legal education is no safeguard against the unethical and criminally minded players in 21st century business. Much can be gained from understanding business law, but in the opinion of this author, lawyers seldom make for good commercially minded businessmen. Businessmen, meanwhile, frequently lack the legal expertise and commercial experience they need to avoid trouble. To square this circle, this book has been written from the perspective of an experienced business practitioner, not a lawyer or academic, for fellow would-be business practitioners. It's not a compendium of 'tricks and strategies' to misguide, deceive or do down others. This work is intended to be a broad methodological review of 'what and why' things can go wrong in business when encountering dishonourable individuals and corporations. In reality, this book is the tugging open of a curtain which has cloaked a largely clandestine subject, but hopefully through the shedding of light, this work will illuminate ways to avoid some of the business world's snake pits, bear traps and mine fields.