Fraud in corporations, relationship between fraud perception and ethical understandings of employees

Misuse of resources and assets of the company by employees to get personal benefit is defined as employee fraud. Ethics is a set of rules that guide people while taking decisions and shaping behaviors. Ethics is a set of rules that shaping behaviors of people and guide them while taking decisions. As a result of employee fraud, businesses suffer a lot of damage and sometimes they go bankrupt. Fraud perception and ethical understandings of employees are the most important elements to recognize the fraud and prevent it. The purpose of this study is; to investigate whether there is a relationship between the fraud perceptions and ethics understandings of the employees and their demographic characteristics. In this study, questionnaire method was preferred as data collection method. The questionnaire consisting of six fraud and two ethical dilemma scenarios was applied on 183 employees and the survey completed. As a result of frequency and variance analysis and tests conducted on the data; the ethical understanding and the fraud perception of employees were found as high. It was determined that the gender of the employees did not significantly differentiate the level of fraud and ethical perception. Both female and male employees did not approve fraud scenarios, and they did not consider the ethical dilemma scenarios as an ethical. It was determined that the positions of the employees did not significantly affect the level of fraud perception of them. It was seen that the employees evaluated the situations they faced case by case, and that both the ethical and the fraud scenarios were rated by the employees at different severities.