ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT
New Findings in EmployeeTheft Research A
s many of you know, I have been researching employee theft, occupational crime, dishonesty, and workplace deviance for nearly thirty years. Regularly I peruse the scholarly journals and academic publications in the library looking for new research studies that can help us all better understand this phenomenon. This column will feature a couple of studies that may shed some new light on this continuing problem. I have included the full citations so you can find these publications online or in your local library to read and share with your staff. If you can’t find the articles, send me an email, and I will try to get the original sources to you. If you do not have direct access to a major research library, try using googlescholar.com.
“Workplace Theft: An Analysis of StudentEmployee Offenders and Job Attributes”
The first article is authored by Elizabeth Ehrhardt Mustaine (University of Central Florida) and Richard Tewksbury (University of Louisville) and published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice 27:1 (pages 111 – 127, 2002). This is a relatively recent study of employee theft that surveyed a large population of college students attending a number of major universities. Since existing research suggests that many dishonest employees are younger, part-time, untenured, and dissatisfied, these two researchers concluded that college students would make an ideal sample of employees to survey about their occupational criminal behavior. They conducted a self-report survey of 1,531 students in the fall of 1996 asking them to report personal demographics, opportunity, and previous theft activities. The findings are consistent with a number of other studies (including mine), but with some rather unique results. The authors found that three factors differentiate between those who admitted stealing at work from those who did not. Some of these predictors included theft behaviors that occurred in other settings. For example, most impressive was the fact that students who have admitted that they recently have broken into a motor vehicle were almost fourteen (13.87) times more likely to steal from their employers. Moreover, students who have recently stolen something from a stranger were over four times (4.35) more likely to steal at work. Also of significant interest was the fact that ex-convicts were nearly four times (3.59) more likely to admit stealing from their place of work than those respondents who have never been sent to prison. There were a few other findings of interest. Alcohol use was related to admitting stealing at work. Public intoxication, but not drug use, predicted admitted workplace theft. College students who reported that they have been drunk in public were 1.56 times more likely to admit stealing while at work. Finally, the more jobs that a
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by Richard C. Hollinger, Ph.D. Dr. Hollinger is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is also director of the Security Research Project, which annually conducts the National Retail Security Survey (soccrim.clas.ufl.edu/criminology/srp/srp.html). Dr. Hollinger can be reached at rhollin@ufl.edu or 352-294-7175. © 2012 Richard C. Hollinger
student has had in the past and the more often these jobs involved cash handling was also related to workplace theft, but at a lower level of predictive power. We must remember that this study was conducted with college students and used self-reported indicators of workplace theft. Nevertheless, even with this caveat about the sample, the policy implications are significant. ■ First, drug testing may be a good indicator of current and future drug use, but may not be the best indicator of theft behavior. ■ Second, criminal background checks that screen out applicants with prior convictions that resulted in incarceration are obviously supported by this screening practice. ■ Third, as we know in social science, the best indicators of future behavior is past behavior, especially when we consider that stealing in non-employment situations is a very good predictor of workplace theft. The principal paradox of this study is the finding that with the exception of the above factors, most of which retailers screen
The best indicators of future behavior is past behavior, especially when we consider that stealing in non-employment situations is a very good predictor of workplace theft. for already, the average college student who does not steal is not dramatically different from the one who does. Since we rely on these young people for a substantial proportion of the retail workforce, there is clearly no “silver bullet” that can distinguish those who will steal at work from those who will not.
“Dishonest Associates in the Workplace: The Correlation between Motivation and Opportunity in Retail among Employee Theft(s)”
The second study that I would like to draw attention to is an excellent master’s thesis written in May of 2009 by Edith Marie Fikes who studied at the University of Texas in Arlington. Unlike many studies, such as the one above that rely upon self-report methodologies, this study reviews the characteristics of associates who were terminated for instances of employee theft by a single anonymous retailer. All of these cases were detected between the first of July 2007 and the end of June 2008. This study employed
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