Dishonest Associates In The Workplace: The Correlation Between Motivation And Opportunity In Retail Among Employee Theft

Abstract

White-collar crime is a major loss to the economy, employers, and consumers. It is a crime that often goes undetected, and when detected, employers rarely file charges, so estimates as to how often it occurs are hard to come by. White-collar crime is a very broad category so the focus of this study was on a sector of white-collar crime, retail employee theft. Cressey's (1973) fraud triangle contained three components: motivation, opportunity, and rationalization. Cressey (1973) claimed that if any of one of these three components did not exist, then the crime would not occur. In this study, retail employee theft was analyzed by reviewing associates whose employment was terminated for theft at Retailer XYZ in a 12 month period from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008. The study revealed that management failure in following correct policy and procedures was present 77% of the cases of employee theft in the data set. There was not a significant correlation between age, length of employment, and management failure. However, the study did reveal vulnerabilities that may contribute to associate theft.