Question

What are some of the motives for employee theft?

Answer 1

There can be numerous motives of executives to commit theft discussed as follows:

1) Personal needs:

The personal requirements of the executive’s may drive them to commit a theft. The reason is that the executives have a lifestyle they need to uphold in the company and in the society. They will not prefer a situation where they feel inferior to others and thus will use the opportunity accorded to them to make more money

2) The pressure on the individual

It entails to the pressure on the individual on emanating from a financial situation such as debts, as well as the shortfall regarding the revenues. Majority of the executive see such problems as difficult to get solved via the proper methods, therefore resorting to engaging in fraudulent activities to solve the financial challenges

3) Company requirements

The executives are required to drive the company to success or out of difficult times. Thus there is a need to show the good performance, as a poor performance is an indicator of poor leadership in the firm. For its avoidance few executives will inflate some of the results to satisfy the shareholders requirement, who may have pressured them much to produce certain results in a given time frame.

4) Comparison with peers

The feel of self-worth among the executives in the company is a major motivator of the executives to commit fraud. It occurs generally when they compare themselves across their industry peers as well as how much they are receiving as a reward in their firm. This comparison generates pressure on the executives as a result they wanting to be equal with their peers commits theft

5) Opportunity factor

The opportunity factor is natural, because executives may receive number of opportunities in the company as they understand the internal controls and as well as the command structure of the organization

6) Ability to rationalize crime

Ability to rationalize crime is a stage of theft triangle calls for the executive officer to make use of their cognitive skills in order to justify their crime activities within the company. Their explanations tend to be so convincing to the rest of the company's members, that their action gets seen as just normal

7) Rational approach

Rationalization has its own significance as again human is capable of creating any kind of justification for their theft activities, thus the executives often don’t consider themselves as criminals. However they think that they are taking a rational approach.