Recommended: 6 causes of fraud
He also rationalized his fraudulent activities by hiding the customer’s late payment in order to be benefitted himself, but said that he was helping people more than he was helping himself. 2. Given that Mr. Pavlo’s fraud was restricted to an accounts receivable embezzlement scheme, what symptoms might auditors observe?
Indeed, the Strain Theory could possibly be one way to explain such erroneous behavior. Strain Theory is Robert Merton’s take on Emile Durkheim’s concept of anomie which essentially says deviance is most likely to occur when there is a gap between goals and ways of obtaining them that are legal and safe. Velma Barfield’s heinous crimes can be dissected and examined using Strain Theory and three distinct happenings of her life which led to the murders of seven people. The first incident can be
The strain theory implies that crime may occur because of the stress or frustration placed on people when
People always wonder what means make people feel they need to commit crime? Do they want to? Do they want to hurt others? Why do they do it? Many criminologists have pondered this question, and have come up with many different theories to answer the age old question of why?
According to “College Pressures” by William Zinsser, there are four varieties of pressures: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. As I was reading the text I kept a minor self-discussion trying to acknowledge what types of pressures I relate most to least. Unsurprisingly, I felt mostly related to both the connection of peer and self-induced pressure. As a student, I have experienced in multiple occasions where I’m in a classroom and the instructor is getting understandable feedback from my peers, and I’m the only one who is puzzled even though I had good grades. However, it did not stop there… I began to give into my anxiety and became psychologically depressed because I kept doubting my own
Gang warfare among teenagers and youth adults As per strain theory teenagers and young adults partake in gang warfare resulting from their inability to reach their personal aspirations and as a result they conform to different ways of achieving such success. iv. Embezzlement of $100,000 by a bank employee Using strain theory, the embezzlement can be explained
HBased on college pressures by William Zinsser, the four pressures that college students experienced in the 70s includes economic, parental, peer and self induced pressure. These pressures still remain in this day and age, but also the pressure to compete with their peers on paper has become a burden. It was once much easier to receive an overall liberal education, and has now become a one tracked focus on what career can make the most money. Students are left limited to the majors that are generally needed rather than follow their dreams. Economic pressure is one of the top pressures that college students face.
The novel The Wave was published in 1991, and authored by Morton Rhue. The Wave originated from a class experiment in Ben Ross’s class. The students were free individuals, but before they knew it, they were being brainwashed into The Wave, its salutes, and its mottoes. The main themes in this novel are, the importance of individuality, dangers of conformity and the power of peer pressure. Power of peer pressure is like being pressured to do or join something without your free will.
The stressors increase the negative emotions, which in turn create pressure for the purpose of a corrective action. The corrective actions mostly come in form of criminal activities that are applied in order to alleviate from the strain or to revenge the source of the stress. For instance, individuals that have been associated with chronic lack of employment mostly engage in crimes such as drug dealing or theft in order to obtain money that can be used to make them feel
Merton. The theory states that society puts pressure on individuals to achieve socially accepted goals (such as the American dream) though they lack the means, this leads to strain which may lead the individuals to commit crimes. Two major concerns in strain theory are the sources of the strain, stress or how people adapt to the strain. Positivism are theories of social and structure are strain theories.
Identity theft is a form of theft when someone assumes another individual’s identity. It is often done so as a modus operandi to gain access to personal information or other benefits from the victim’s name. There are five types of identity theft according to wikipedia which include criminal identity theft, financial identity theft, identity cloning, medical identity theft and child identity theft. The most common type of identity theft is financial identity theft, where someone gains financial access to someone else’s by assuming his/her identity .
The fraud triangle is made up by three distinguished elements. These elements in the fraud triangle consist of pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. The overall representation of the fraud triangle can be seen as the specific model to spot any type of high-risk unethical and fraudulent performances being conducted by a company, in this case Cendant Corporation. Cedant Corporations actions can be analyzed by the fraud triangle by the way that their senior management/top management decisions fell into the three categories of pressure, rationalization, and opportunity. Cendant Corporation had the pressure to comply with their shareholders and to maintain a stable financial status to prove that they were a profitable organization with a bright company image.
In 1985 Robert Agnew a sociologist come to an interest of studying the theory and finds a potential for the theory in explaining several causes of crime in society, but due to its limitation he developed and reformulated the theory to widen its dimension or scope. After revising the theory he come up into General strain theory of crime and builds its foundation in 1992. General strain theory argues that frustrations and anger leads someone to deviance and may result into committing a crime (Agnew, 1992). GST defines strains as negative life events and conditions which are commonly disliked by the people who experience it or negative experiences of a person in a given group (Agnew, 1992; 2001; 2006). Strain is often classified in two distinct types, the Objective Strain and the Subjective Strain.
The opportunity theory suggests that offenders choose to commit crimes based on the opportunity that is presented to them to achieve their crime. For instance, if an individual is willing or ready to engage in crime and the situation proves to be favorable (environment) to the offender this opportunity in turn creates motive for the offender to execute a crime. This theory also argues that all crimes require opportunity but not every opportunity is followed by crime. The perspectives of this theory can also be used to build off of Merton’s strain theory.
The topic of this assignment is to discuss and analyse what factors affect human behavior and in doing so how human behavior is shaped. But before discussing that, it is important to understand what human behavior is. To define it in a few sentences or words would not be sufficient as human behavior consists of many factors and therefore contributes majorly to who we are as a person. But to put it simply, it is defined as all actions and emotions that an individual portrays in response to the different kinds of stimuli they receive no matter whether these responses are conscious or subconscious and voluntary or involuntary (Merriam-webster.com, 2015).
