Institute a culture of integrity in organisations

Abstract

Integrity within employees is on the forefront as a person with integrity is one that is honest and trustworthy. In contrast is an employee with low integrity that could be associated with acts of fraud, corruption and theft. The purpose of this report is to address the proposition that higher integrity levels within employees will lead to lower financial stock losses. In addition the integrity levels of all employees were measured to see whether the integrity level of permanent employees were higher than those of temporary employees. Strategies were implemented in order to develop the integrity level of Clover Nelspruit’s employees. The strategies included addressing the situational factors desirability, group norms and risk together with focusing on communication regarding integrity. The monthly averaged stock loss for the period June to September 05 was considerably lower than the previous eleven months which led to the confirmation that improving a person’s integrity can be positively associated with lower financial losses caused by internal theft. In considering only the employees who passed the lie factor in the measurement instrument the results were also in agreement with the theory that temporary workers might be more likely to engage in counterproductive behaviour than those employed as permanent workers.