Employee satisfaction and theft: Testing climate perceptions as a mediator,” The

ABSTRACT. Employee theft of both property and time is an expensive and pervasive problem for American organizations. One antecedent of theft behaviors is employee dis-satisfaction, but not all dissatisfied employees engage in withdrawal or theft behaviors. The authors tested a model of theft behavior by using an organization’s climate for theft as an explanatory mechanism. They found that dissatisfaction influenced employee theft behaviors through the intermediary influence of employees ’ individual perceptions of the organization’s climate for theft. The authors encourage organizations to pay attention to such climate elements and take action to alter employee perceptions if they reflect permis-sive attitudes toward theft