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

The Effects of Low Self-Control and Desire-for-Control on White-Collar Offending: A Replication

“…The theorists argued that all crimes would be associated with self-control as all offenders have the same motivation; that is all offenders are low in self-control. However, the evidence would suggest the theory is supported for individualistic WCC such as fraud, embezzlement, and employee theft (Holtfreter et al 2010;Langton et al 2006;Schoepfer et al 2014) but is not supported for organizational or corporate crime (Simpson and Piquero 2002;Schoepfer et al 2014). This indicates there are differences the theory cannot predict and some have pointed to the role of context to explain these differences (Holtfreter et al 2010).…”

“…Specifically, Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) general theory of crime was found to predict some types of white-collar crime such as employee theft (Langton et al 2006) but not others such as corporate crime (Simpson and Piquero 2002). Desire-for-control, while not tested as broadly as self-control, was found to predict intentions to engage in corporate crime (Piquero et al 2005;Schoepfer et al 2014).…”

Using Student Samples in Criminological Research

“…Behaviors that seem to be considered most often include criminal and deviant behaviors, victimization experiences and attitudes. For example, research has examined how often students steal (Kraut, 1976;Langton, Piquero, & Hollinger, 2006;Mustaine & Tewksbury, 2002), patterns and consequences associated with binge drinking (Wechsler, Davenport, Dowdall, Moeykens, & Castillo, 1994;Wechsler, Dowdall, Davenport, Castillo, 1995), links between alcohol consumption and violence (Carr & VanDeusen, 2004;Chen, Miller, Grube, & Waiters, 2006), as well as patterns of student cheating (Eskridge & Ames, 1993;Mustaine & Tewksbury, 2005;Tibbetts, 1998). These, and other questions, are asked by researchers to shed light on the behavior of students and often to learn lessons about criminal and deviant behavior in general.…”

The Role of Rational Calculus in Controlling Individual Propensity toward Information Security Policy Non-Compliance Behavior

“…Self-control has an effect size that exceeds 0.20, which, the authors argue, puts it as one of the strongest correlates of crime when in comparison with other criminal behavior predictors reported in the literature. Langton et al investigated the relationship between self-control and workplace theft behavior and found that attitudinal self-control as measured by Grasmick et al [19] is the strongest predictor to workplace theft intention [34]. Given the close relationship between workplace delinquency and information security policy violations, we can logically argue that: H3: The lower an individual's self-control, the stronger the intention to commit security policy violations.…”