Richard C. Hollinger

Acts against the workplace: Social bonding and employee deviance

Research into the phenomenon of workplace deviance has separately focused on two types of employee rule‐breaking behavior, 1) acts against the property and assets of the organization and 2) various types of counter‐productive behavior. In an attempt to compare the theoretical and empirical similarity of these two forms of employee deviance, this paper examines the self‐reported involvement in both property and production deviance among a population of employees randomly sampled from three industry sectors and three metropolitan areas. Utilizing a weighted least squares logit regression analysis, the findings support continued conceptual separation of these two forms of employee rule‐breaking as they seem to be explained by slightly different configurations of the “social bonding” model. Involvement in property deviance seems to be primarily the result of a lack of future “commitment” to the organization, while counter‐productive behavior is better understood using a combination of “commitment, attachment,...

Deviance in the fast-food restaurant : correlates of employee theft, altruism, and counterproductivity

Existing research suggests that employee deviance is highest in occupational settings that rely heavily on “marginal” workers—especially those who are young with little tenure—who believe that they are treated unfairly by their employers. As a test of this proposition, an anonymous survey was conducted among a two‐company national sample of 341 fast‐food restaurant workers. Three fifths of the respondents reported some level of personal involvement in theft of company property during the previous 6 months. In addition, more than one third were involved in “altruistic” forms of property deviance. Moreover, four fifths of the respondents reported involvement in counterproductive activities against the organization. Contrary to expectations, a slightly different explanatory solution emerged for each of the three forms of employee deviance. Personal property deviance was principally a function of age and perceived employer unfairness—both interacting with tenure. Involvement in altruistic property deviance wa...

Employee Deviance A Response to the Perceived Quality of the Work Experience

Inquiries into the nature of deviance in the employment setting have generally assumed (without much empirical support) that an important explanatory factor is the employees perception regarding quality of the work experience. Testing the above hypothesis, this study examines self-report data from almost 5000 respondents in 35 midwestern corporations, concluding that both “general” and more “specific” measures of job satisfaction are significantly related (in the predicted negative direction) to reported involvement in deviant acts against the formal work organization.

Academic Dishonesty and the Perceived Effectiveness of Countermeasures: An Empirical Survey of Cheating at a Major Public University

This study presents self-reported prevalence and incidence data about student academic dishonesty generated from an anonymous survey conducted at a major Southeastern public university, evaluating the perceived effectiveness of a variety of cheating countermeasures by specifically comparing those students who admitted involvement with those who did not. The authors discuss various policy implications suggested by these findings.

An Empirical Test of the Relationship Between Employee Theft and Low Self-Control

Although Gottfredson and Hirschi (1987, 1990) maintain that low self-control can account for white-collar/corporate offending, there have been few and inconclusive empirical tests in this area. One area of white-collar crime, in particular, which could benefit from an examination of the role of low self-control in predicting offending, is employee theft. Although employee theft is one of the more costly and pervasive crimes impacting the American economy each year, there has been very little research examining the role of individual characteristics and personality traits in predicting this type of deviant behavior. The current research is a preliminary attempt at integrating the two bodies of literature, employee theft and low self-control.

Who actually steals? A study of covertly observed shoplifters

Shoplifting is one of the most common and costly crimes, yet little data exist to determine reliably characteristics of the typical shoplifter or the modus operandi of the crime. It is a crime that has most often been studied using official, secondary data provided by either retail security personnel or law enforcement officers. Reliability issues plague these official data. Continuing the “dark figure of crime” tradition, this study examines shoplifting by covert observation with a camera system installed in a typical suburban retail drug store. A standardized data template was used to record the demographic and behavioral characteristics of shoppers. Significant numbers of shoppers (8.5%) were observed shoplifting. Logistic regression analysis reveals that, while members of some demographic groups shoplifted more often than others, behavioral indicators carried far more predictive power. The methodology and findings are considered within the larger context of the law enforcement and “profiling” literatures.

The Impact of Implicit Stereotyping on Offender Profiling Unexpected Results From an Observational Study of Shoplifting

Much debate centers on the use of offender profiling as a technique to differentiate criminals from law-abiding citizens. Profiling advocates argue that it is appropriate to reference past experiences and information about known offenders to identify behavioral and demographic correlates that can then be applied to a given population of offenses or offenders. The viability of this argument rests on the assumption that past experiences and information about known offenders are free of bias. Data from an observational study of shoplifting are analyzed to assess this assumption systematically. Results indicate that trained observers, when allowed to deviate from a clearly specified random selection protocol, oversampled shoppers on the basis of race, gender, and perceived age, thus misrepresenting these factors as predictors of shoplifting behavior. Implications for the training of law enforcement and loss prevention officers are discussed.

The relationship between crime and private security at US shopping centers

This paper uses self-report data from the 1993 National Shopping Center Security Survey to examine the growing problem of crime at shopping centers located in the United States. Security managers from 369 shopping centers provided data on crime incidents, private security measures, and numerous shopping center demographic measures. Data are analyzed via LISREL using bivariate regression modeling. Results show that there is no direct relationship between the private security measures at the shopping center and the occurrence of property, violent, or public order crimes on the premises. Instead, private security presence is shaped by the size of the shopping center. Direct effects were also found between the incidence of crime on the premises and the size of the shopping center and the presence of various “problematic” persons (i.e., gangs and loitering groups of youth). Possible implications for shopping center security are considered.

A routine activities approach to suburban arson rates

Cohen and Felsons theory of “routine activities” is evaluated using 1980 arson rate data for 676 American suburbs. Influences of criminal motivation (percent poor, percent unemployed, percent black and percent youth), criminal opportunities (percent old housing, percent multiple housing and the number of commercial/industrial establishments), guardianship (police employment, police expenditure and female labor force participation) and ecological niche (employment concentration and median house value) on suburban arson rates for 1980 are estimated using maximum likelihood (LISREL) techniques. Consistent with the routine activities model, a multiplicative effect of the pre‐conditions for crime on crime rates are also estimated. Motivation, opportunities and guardianship were found to have direct and/or indirect additive effects on arson rates, thus supporting the “routine activities” model. A multiplicative effect of the preconditions of crime was also found.

Race, occupational status, and pro-active police arrest for drinking and driving

The issue of pro-active police arrest bias by race, occupational status, and police patrol intensity is examined using the offense of DUI (Driving Under the Influence of alcohol). Intoxicated drivers from a 10-weekend roadside survey of vehicles randomly selected from the streets of a medium-sized southeastern metropolitan area are compared to officially arrested drivers apprehended during a corresponding time period. Upon examination, no statistically significant arrest bias was detected by the drivers race. However, compared to the roadside survey population, lower occupational status drivers (i.e., blue collar) were significantly more likely to appear in the arrested population than an upper status (i.e., white collar) driver--especially in the lightly patrolled middle and upper class residential sections of town. The significance of occupational status, when combined with the finding that race was not a significant indicator of difference between the arrested and roadside survey populations, suggests that pro-active police arrest bias is more a function of institutionally determined police patrol practices rather than overt racial prejudice on the part of individual officers.