Why Do Employees Steal?

Workplace Doc:

From a behavior standpoint, why do employees steal?

Sincerely,

Concerned

Hello Concerned:

You ask "From a behavioral standpoint why do employees steal?" Such a question can be addressed both from an opportunity perspective and a intentional-character perspective.

By opportunity, I mean the workplace situation invites stealing. The organization does not have controls in place that prevent it. So employees can steal paper, tools, products, parts, cash, etc. The watchful eyes of cameras, difficult to remove tags, security guards, and various other means such as requiring two signatures on company checks are tactics used to prevent opportunity to steal.

By intentional-character causes of misbehavior, I mean the employee has a rather low or flexible standard for property rights. Such employees may. . .

• rationalize that if the organization is stupid enough to let cash and parts lie around it deserves to have such taken.

   

• have gotten by with shoplifting and taking things so that taking material that appeals to them has become a habit.

   

• reason that the gap between those that have high salaries and perks need some stealing by those who do not to level the playing field. Inequities in rewards justify stealing for those with flexible notions of ownership.

Some employees in a retail store with a flexible concept of honesty may change a price tag on a product which they then purchase at a lower price. They may rationalize that act by thinking that a discount is owed them because their pay is low, or they may say others may have mispriced it or already changed the tag, and/or they may reason that a few dollars less won't be missed.

Studies have shown that more people will steal form a large organization rather than an individual, reasoning that big business has robbed them blind. The impersonalness of stealing from a corporate giant seems easier to rationalize than does stealing from someone who is similar to them because they also put on their pants one leg at a time.

The character flaw reason for stealing may be rooted in the ethic of taking personal and corporate advantage competitiveness, which is the core business behavior of a capitalistic system. Communal values such as the concept of the common good often get short shrift in a "You-Gotta-Fight-For-What-You-Get" society. The public good and the need for trust based on being trusted and being able to trust is something too often missing from parental, school and religious education.

Employees may steal because they do not realize that is it destructive to a society not to be able to trust. They simply do not realize that stealing from their workplace destroys trust and that living in a situation in which trust has been seriously misplaced and damaged is an uncomfortable way to live.

A mistrusting environment engenders more mistrust. For example, if a member of your family has shoplifted it can cause you to wonder if that spouse, child, or relative has taken money for from your purse. And you may accuse them of that unjustly or you may hide your purse wondering if your money will be safe. Such a family relationship is not a pleasant way to live, and how sad it is that we must be every wary and watchful in the workplace of our co-workers after something turns up missing.

Stealing by employees also can come in more subtle ways such as by not caring. Caring is the trait that marks an employee workforce that is committed to the mission of the place in which they work. It is caring not only for the well-being of oneself, but also of one's internal and external customers that is necessary for have a high speed performance and high quality operation.

The deficit of the virtuous traits of good sense, good will and good character, as voiced by the ancient sages, is a cause for employees stealing in both tangible and intangible behaviors.

Mission statements are a beginning for setting high ethical standards, but they are not enough. There is need for continuous corporate attention to ethical concerns in like ways to the the need the church has to ring its bells to announce that church is an ongoing institution and in like ways to the need a corporation has for its advertising campaign to never stop.

Quality improvement efforts, cycle reduction strategies, and product knowledge training should always include the moral answer of why do it. That moral answer of why do it must be more than profit if the highest motivation for extra effort by employees is to become the standard of behavior and stealing is to be unthinkable. That why do it and why not do it must be spelled out in word and deed.

Don't steal and do give attention to quality are rooted in the same fundamental societal virtue--of the need for a caring and trusting relationship in the work setting and wider community, and in the fearful, stressful, and unpleasantness of an environment in which that virtue is in short supply.

So the workplace policies regarding zero tolerance for theft should be spelled out but should be of no less concern than is attention to equitable standards for pay, attention to employees quality of worklife, and are concerns for not stealing from future generations by wasting non-renewable natural resources.

Ethical and moral conscious-raising moral debates are not only topics for social responsibility and philosophy classes in business schools. They should be integral to the conversations that take place where we work. Making that kind of conversation a part of our workday entails more than talking about stealing, and it is the kind of talk that all of us can initiate.

I'm sure that my answer is much more detailed than you expected, but I would welcome your reactions to what I have said and would like to know what prompted your question about employee stealing if you feel free to tell me.

WEGO tells us why stealing wrong for a workplace and the society.

--Bill Gorden

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