: 10.56472/25835238/IRJEMS-V4I4P117
Maletlatso Motsomotso. "Implications of Employee Theft on the Financial Performance of Retail Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)" International Research Journal of Economics and Management Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 163-172, 2025.
Employee theft has been identified as one of the most popular workplace deviances that are a common problem experienced by business in almost every country around the world. This study sought to find the main reasons why employees steal, the prevention and monitoring techniques used in addressing the situation, and the impact employee theft has on the performance of the business in retail SMEs. The study was conducted by self-administered questionnaires to 330 retail SME owners and managers in Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality (Bloemfontein, Botshabelo and Thaba Nchu). The findings of the study revealed that the opportunity to steal and employees feeling underpaid for their hard work were identified as the reasons why employees steal. The study also found that the majority of SME owners and managers do not have or use any monitoring technique. Employee theft was found to negatively affect the financial performance of the business. The respondents used for the study were owners and managers of SMEs, so future research can use employees as the respondents to find out whether the findings can be generalised across businesses in different business sectors.
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Employee theft, Financial Performance, Implications, Retail, Small and Medium Enterprises.