Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Accusations: Between the Innuendo and the Illegal
- Chapter 2 Red Flags: How to Assemble an Accusation
- Chapter 3 Fighting Words and Key Phrases
- Chapter 4 Market Exchanges Gone Sour: Six Fields of Action
- Chapter 5 Finger Pointing and Three Themes: Lying, Cheating, Stealing
- Chapter 6 The Ecology of Greed: Hot Spots for Accusations
- Chapter 7 The Repertoires of Wrongdoing
- Appendix A Notes on Statistical Analysis and Coding Principal Themes, Keywords, and Key Phrases in the Accusations
- Appendix B A Sample of United States Corporations and Counts of Public Announcements of Alleged Economic Crime – 1994 (fourth quarter) to 2006 (first quarter)
- Tables
- References
- Index
Chapter 2 - Red Flags: How to Assemble an Accusation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Accusations: Between the Innuendo and the Illegal
- Chapter 2 Red Flags: How to Assemble an Accusation
- Chapter 3 Fighting Words and Key Phrases
- Chapter 4 Market Exchanges Gone Sour: Six Fields of Action
- Chapter 5 Finger Pointing and Three Themes: Lying, Cheating, Stealing
- Chapter 6 The Ecology of Greed: Hot Spots for Accusations
- Chapter 7 The Repertoires of Wrongdoing
- Appendix A Notes on Statistical Analysis and Coding Principal Themes, Keywords, and Key Phrases in the Accusations
- Appendix B A Sample of United States Corporations and Counts of Public Announcements of Alleged Economic Crime – 1994 (fourth quarter) to 2006 (first quarter)
- Tables
- References
- Index
Summary
The red flag is a perspicuous danger-ahead warning. It is a highly charged, often offensive public signal that something is wrong between business partners or between a firm and the government's regulators.
The red flag is in the interstitial spaces between in-group innuendo and slander (gossip) and criminal charges (indictment). The intermediate nature of accusations makes them important for understanding communicative processes and the collective imagination. They contain innuendo as well as the threat of civil or criminal action.
All fraud charges generated by the SEC have criminal counterparts. Whether criminal charges ultimately emerge after the accusations and rebukes is usually a function of intent to defraud; the question is whether the charges can be proved to the far higher criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
But at the beginning of this process the red flags of rebukes always involve succinct public declarations of what went wrong in a particular economic exchange. They may even give rise to “counter accusations” stating, for example, that the complaints are without factual basis, are exaggerated and stuffed with trumped-up sucker-bait. They always take place within a rich market context full of announcements and their announcers and thus, preserving these words and voices is tantamount to observing the contentious moments in the market.
Variously called “alarm bells,” “cautionary flags,” and “warning signs,” red flags are announcements that “redefine” or “restructure” an ambiguous socioeconomic issue and locate its place in the market.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Corporate Wrongdoing and the Art of the Accusation , pp. 29 - 40Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2011