Dark side of business: criminal firms and external control of resources in the public sector domain

In the last few years organizational scholars have increased the amount of attention devoted to the investigation of the ‘darkness’ in the business world. Despite the variety of different approaches, we claim that current managerial studies are unable to explain dynamics of the grey areas between the world of business and criminal actors. In this paper we focus on the concept of dark side of business analysing the mechanisms adopted by criminal firms in order to thrive in the business of public works. We submit that Resource Dependency Theory could provide a suitable means of understanding this side of the concept of dark side of business.