Predicting the risk of “white collar” offending: assessing the interaction of work environment and offender characteristics.

Financial trust violation is extremely costly but researchers from criminology, psychology and management/security are yet to agree on a standard model to help explain this offence. The aims of this thesis were to: (i) develop a model to enhance our understanding of the core processes of financial trust violation, (ii) develop an assessment tool that evaluates the core processes of financial trust violation in individuals, (iii) review the personality traits within financial trust violators and how these impact on the core processes and (iv) to understand the role that the perceived security precautions of the organization and the organization’s actions and culture designed to support an ethical environment has on the core processes of financial trust violation. The core processes of financial trust violation were identified from Cressey’s (1953) model and enhanced by considering related research including the theft research of Greenberg (1997; 1998). The Business Security Questionnaire (BSQ) was designed to assess these core processes: demographic factors, motivations, opportunity, values, and rationalisations. The personality factors investigated were neurotic personality type and ‘white collar’ psychopathy which were assessed by Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ; Young & Brown, 1991) and the B-Scan (Babiak & Hare, 2004) respectively. Thirty incarcerated individuals (18 men and 12 women) who had been convicted of financial trust violation of amounts between $90,000 and $22,000,000 from their own company or employer were assessed. The results revealed that the core processes were largely supported, especially through highly endorsed specific items, though these findings suggested that environmental factors did not have an impact on these processes. The YSQ showed that the schemas of self sacrifice and unrelenting standards and the B-Scan scales of blaming and shallow were elevated in this population. Significant gender differences and a range of specific relationships between elevated schemas and B-Scan scales were found between core processes of financial trust violation. A comprehensive but exploratory model was then developed and key foundation items for a precise measure of the risk of a staff member of committing a financial trust violation were suggested. A second sample was then developed, including a comparison group of fifteen non-violent property offenders and thirteen financial trust violators similar to the first sample, and assessed with three instruments. The Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised was substituted for the B-Scan due to the focus on employment, the YSQ and PDS was also used as with the first sample. A subset of male financial trust violators in this group completed the B-Scan. The results supported the personality aspects of the exploratory model, showing key differences between financial trust violation and non-violent property offenders at non significant levels of the same schemas as the first sample and significant differences on several of PPI-R scales. This finding suggests a distinct personality profile for finanical trust violators exists, which can be differentiated from offenders whose focus was just finanical gain, but differences lie in the level of self-reported psychopathy. Further research will need to utilise a large sample of employees with financial trust to validate the model for its intended purpose.