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Conrad Black Case Summary

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In 2007, Conrad Black, a prominent journalist, publisher, and investor was convicted of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $125,000. Later on, Mr. Black had two of the counts of fraud overturned on appeal. Mr. Black served only 37 months in a U.S prison before being released in 2012 and retuning to Canada (McFarland 2014). The case study of Conrad Black will be used to evaluate how human beings behave under various circumstances. In the 1990’s Mr. Black built one of the biggest newspaper groups in the world (Lemieux, 2011). He owned a newspaper group known as Hollinger, which he progressively grew from its roots. After Black had stepped down as the CEO of Hollinger, it was realized that he had been engaging in fraudulent activities. For instance, he had paid Hollinger’s executives a lot of money …show more content…

He argued that every human being has unique preferences which greatly influence them when making choices (Breen and Rottman 1995). People are mostly motivated by money and are likely to carry out a cost-benefit analysis before settling on a decision. It is based on the following premises: human behavior is based on rational calculations, human beings act with rationality when making choices and these choices are aimed at maximizing gains or pleasure. In a similar manner, Interactionist Theory (IT) is used to study social interactions among people. It does not study the entire population at once, but rather studies smaller social groups. It focuses on how individuals act and how they make behavioral choices depending on the way they interpret situations (Hindess, 1998, p.42). From another perspective, it states that human beings only react to social stimuli. As such, they are social actors, and must adjust their behaviors in consideration to the behaviors of other human

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