Jay P. Kennedy

Shedding Light on Employee Theft’s Dark Figure: A Typology of Employee Theft Nonreporting Rationalizations

ABSTRACT Employee theft is one of the most harmful crimes a small business can experience. Yet despite the large financial, organizational, and emotional toll employee theft takes, it is one of the most underreported crimes committed against small businesses. Using data obtained from interviews with victimized small business owners, this article develops a typology of employee theft nonreporting rationalizations. Additionally, interview data indicate that nonreporting rationalizations follow a general pattern of use, beginning with an assessment of the theft as trivial or significant, and proceeding to a consideration of personal factors that influence nonreporting, which is followed by a consideration of the effectiveness of previous interactions with the criminal justice system. Understanding how these rationalizations influence reporting behavior may assist scholars and practitioners to help small businesses better deal with their employee theft experiences, and may also help to explain why employee thefts will likely continue to be underreported.

Sharing the keys to the kingdom: responding to employee theft by empowering employees to be guardians, place managers, and handlers

Employee theft is one of the most common crimes committed against small businesses; however, the role that employees of the business can play in actively controlling opportunities for employee theft has not yet been fully explored. This article presents an employee theft prevention strategy reliant upon the active efforts of employees, not business owners or managers. This adaptation reclassifies the roles of employees, owners, and managers by incorporating employees directly into the theft prevention process as crime controllers, while owners and managers are given the role of super controllers. Transitioning owners and managers into the role of a super controller elevates them to a position of high-level guardianship and oversight, thereby allowing them to more effectively manage the businesss overall theft prevention strategy. Giving employees responsibility for employee theft prevention efforts places responsibility for controlling the factors that lead to crime into the hands of employees who will serve as handlers of potential offenders, guardians of suitable targets, and place managers controlling locations where targets and offenders meet.

Emotional Reactions to Employee Theft and the Managerial Dilemmas Small Business Owners Face

Employee theft is one of the most harmful crimes that can occur to a small business. Research on this crime has focused primarily on its financial impact and how to prevent it. However, like other forms of crime, employee theft also has more personal and subjective effects on victims. To date, these aspects of employee theft victimization have been largely ignored. We address this gap in the literature by exploring the emotional consequences of employee theft as experienced by the owners of small businesses. Guided by grounded theory methodology, we conducted a series of in-person interviews with the owners of small businesses to gain a better understanding of the total impact of employee theft. Analysis of interviews indicated that victimized business owners experienced a range of cognitive and emotional reactions to theft. At times, these reactions were severe, and they were exacerbated if the victim had a strong emotional connection with the offender.

Occupational Pharmaceutical Counterfeiting Schemes: A Crime Scripts Analysis

ABSTRACT This article presents a crime script for pharmaceutical counterfeiting schemes perpetrated by licensed health care professionals; we term these types of schemes occupational pharmaceutical counterfeiting. To date, there have been no empirical investigations of these schemes, nor any attempts to disentangle their many elements and components. Using qualitative content analysis techniques we examined data from the A-CAPP Product Counterfeiting database related to pharmaceutical counterfeiting schemes. We develop a crime script for pharmaceutical counterfeiting that describes key acts, scenes, actors, activities, and enforcement conditions. Occupational counterfeiters leverage their position as a health care provider to abuse patient trust and conceal their deviant acts.

Asset misappropriation in small businesses

Purpose Increase understanding of the types of insider financial frauds that occur within small businesses by focusing on a sample of businesses that have not employed a CFE in response to employee theft. Design/methodology/approach Survey data analyzed come from 102 small businesses (100 employees or fewer) in a midsized Midwestern city in the United States, and reflect 125 reported employee thefts. Findings Study results indicate that small businesses that do not hire a CFE report certain thefts with greater and lower frequencies as compared to small businesses that do hire a CFE. For particular types of frauds CFEs may be no more useful than the efforts of business owners or managers, and other employees. Practical implications There may be important organizational differences between businesses that hire CFEs and those that do not; differences related to the ways in which business finances are maintained, the ways in which specific controls are used, and the ability of employees to access business res...

Towards a more proactive approach to brand protection: development of the Organisational Risk Assessment for Product Counterfeiting (ORAPC)

ABSTRACT Through an adaptation of a terrorism risk assessment model, this article develops an initial proactive product counterfeiting risk assessment that is designed to focus upon a specific product’s risk for being counterfeited. The goal of developing this risk assessment is to help corporations identify the products that are most at risk for counterfeiting, thereby giving them the ability to focus their resources in the areas where the greatest opportunities for crime are present. This risk assessment is intended to serve as the first line of defence in a comprehensive and proactive brand owner strategy centred on identifying product-specific counterfeiting risk. The assessment comprises three factors that, together, capture a product’s counterfeiting risk level: the threat of product counterfeiting, the brand owner’s vulnerability to product counterfeiting and the potential consequences of a counterfeit product entering the market and reaching consumers.

Clicking Into Harm’s Way: The Decision to Purchase Regulated Goods Online

The growth of the Internet has expanded e-commerce, opening a vast array of purchasing options for consumers while also increasing illicit sales. Such sales place consumers at risk. This study examines consumers’ decisions to purchase cigarettes and prescription pharmaceuticals, two highly regulated goods, from online vendors. Drawing on a statewide survey of nearly 1,000 residents in Michigan, we assess the prevalence of Internet purchases of these goods, the differences between those who make these purchases online and those who do not, and the factors associated with Internet purchase decisions. In general, it was discovered that the prevalence of Internet purchases of these goods is relatively low, but the frequency with which the sales are illicit is relatively high. Additionally, the factors that explain the decision by consumers to purchase these items online and their reasons for doing so vary by product type. The study offers a discussion of these findings and their implications for crime prevention and further research.

Proposed Solutions to the Brand Protection Challenges and Counterfeiting Risks Faced by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

ABSTRACT Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are vulnerable to the same counterfeiting threats faced by larger businesses, yet, the unique brand protection challenges they face have not been explored. These challenges relate to resource constraints that make it difficult to implement traditional brand protection strategies. This article discusses the problem of product counterfeiting from the perspective of SMEs, while considering how the resource constraints they face impact their ability to establish brand protection programs. Potential solutions are described, and 10 testable propositions intended to guide future research and the practice of brand protection in SMEs are proposed.