Companies called lax in curbing theft by employees

By , Business correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor














Times of corporate upheaval are times when it's hard to keep employees honest , Professor Clark notes. One of the firms he surveyed merged with a larger company during the course of the study. ''Theft went up greatly.''

There is a general perception that standards ''aren't what they used to be,'' that young people demonstrate a greater moral laxity than their parents and grandparents did. And studies on employee theft do tend to find that young, unmarried employees with their employer only a short time cause a disproportionate amount of theft.

But Professor Clark sees this less as an indication of eroding standards over time than of the fact that in every era, young employees with less responsibility and less stake in their firm tend to have fewer qualms about stealing from it.

This doesn't mean that a company has to put up with theft, though. Those with lots of young, ''uncommitted'' employees can take positive steps to include them in the ''corporate family'' through extra supervision, fellowship programs, and the like, Professor Clark says.

But if he doesn't buy the idea that morals have deteriorated over time, he does suggest that people nowadays are ''probably more capable of compartmentalizing their behavior. There are different ways to behave at home, at work, with the kids.'' This is to say that the morality of the home doesn't necessarily make the commute into the workplace.

''If you pass through the gates of the workplace without standards of your own, you're at the level of the work group, 'Everything goes till I find out differently,' '' says Clark.

Giving supervisors explicit authority to bend the rules a bit can be an important management tool, Clark suggests. ''The supervisor can say to an employee, 'Look, you've been working so hard, why don't you take a long lunch?' Or he can say, 'They're really coming down hard on us to get this order shipped - can you take a short lunch hour?' It's called 'brokering deviance' to the company, and it's not necessarily a negative thing.''

Lewis Shealy, vice-president for asset protection at Woodward &amp; Lothrop, the Washington department store chain, endorses the ''firm but fair'' message of the Clark-Hollinger study.

''We have a good employee orientation program,'' he says. ''We show them films during training of how people get caught (stealing).''

As a condition of employment, Woodie's employees are asked to sign an agreement by which they consent to searches of such personal property as lockers , handbags, and other items.

''We also have positive incentives,'' Mr. Shealy adds, by which he means a reward system whereby employees get $500 plus half the loot if they inform on fellow workers who have stolen. ''We double the award at Christmas.''

Asked whether encouraging employees to inform on one another doesn't undermine morale, Mr. Shealy says that on the contrary, taking steps to control theft builds morale. ''They work better, they sell better, if they know we're doing something about it. . . . Workers don't have respect for a thief.''

What's especially demoralizing is to have employees blow the whistle on dishonest co-workers - and then see no action taken. That's why the policy at Woodie's is to ''prosecute everyone we can,'' Mr. Shealy says.

Share this story:
