Sunshine Fashion: Fraud, Theft and Misbehaviour among Employees (OCB and CPWB)

What are the root causes – individual and contextual -- for the employee misbehaviour at Sunshine?

At Sunshine Fashion, the main manifestations of employees’ misbehaviour are fraud and theft by branch managers at the local Chinese market. The root causes of these misbehaviours are both individual and contextual:

Individual:
- Weak sense of belonging and loyalty to Sunshine (high yearly turnover of branch managers of 20%): Branch managers use Sunshine stores to build personal relationships with department stores and to promote their own brands.
- Need to get be better rewarded: theft is a symptom that managers are not well remunerated. Pocketing the …show more content…

Also, the company must reconsider their approach to loyalty. The president of the company puts a certain effort to maintain loyalty of department stores, but it is not said at what extent he is putting effort to connect with his own employees. Charismatic leadership lowers the chances of CWB (see Rotundo Spector – Counter productive work behavior).

Sunshine Fashion should do a comprehensive analysis to understand the factors of managers that misbehaved in the past. A sound meta-analysis of CWB antecedents (see OCB & CWB notes, pages 47-50) shows the following factors that can be applicable to Sunshine case: age, marital status, tenure, job satisfaction. Based on detailed analysis of internal situation at Sunshine, an internal structure to encourage loyalty should be put in place (see next question). To address that problem, the company must create a structure in which good working conditions and sound leadership are available to help reduce the motivation to commit fraudulent actions.

What kinds of actions might management take to address these problems? Should they intensify the punishments? Based on the readings, which actions do you believe will be most effective and why?

Actions Effectiveness
Revise hiring criteria:
- Hire people with high conscientiousness (Big Five Personality