Author: Edited by Ron Burke, York University, Canada and Cary Cooper, Lancaster University
ISBN No: 978-0-566-0891
Review date: 09/06/2026
No of pages: 482
Publisher: Gower
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
Risky Business covers a spectrum of high-risk behaviour in organisations. Some – such as theft – are very much the business of a security person. Others may not be strictly security, but may well fly across the security radar.
The list of what is ‘toxic’ about an organisation, and the sorts of risks that workers (even senior and excelling ones) bring to their workplace is dizzying. Some addictions or wrong-doing may happen outside work – gambling, drinking, viewing pornography online. Are they the employer’s business? How do you manage risks – such as the risk of, to quote an American phrase, someone ‘going postal’? That comes from a postal worker who shot and killed people, then, himself, because he was getting the sack. Does a business make allowances for addicts, bullies or even unethical frauds, if they are high-fliers? The two book editors, a Canadian and English academic, write of the book as ‘a consciousness-raising effort’. These and other risks – even being a workaholic – put the people and their organisation at risk, they argue. Harassment, fiddling the company because you feel you deserve it, is a waste. Though the price of the book is quite steep – aimed at a business readership – at least for your money you get the equivalent of several books by a dozen authors about workplace risks from substance abuse to violence and stress. As it’s written by several nationalities, mainly not UK, it’s weaker on the legalities of doing or not doing something about risks – such as intervening in sexual harassment.
The final chapter, ‘Biting the hand that feeds’ about ‘the employee theft epidemic’ is by Terence Daryl Shulman, an American who describes himself as being ‘in recovery since 1990 for addictive-compulsive shoplifting and employee theft’. As he puts it: “I not only bought the T-shirt, I stole it. And, like most people, I had engaged in occasional pilfering from several jobs.” He founded a shoplifters anonymous group in Detroit. “It is not my intention to be soft on stealing. But if so many people are doing it – to lesser or greater degrees – shouldn’t we try to understand why this is happening and develop more progressive ways to deter, detect and deal with employee theft? … We’ve created a climate of resentment, mistrust, disloyalty, even harassment.” As he identifies, many employees feel that ‘they owe me’. While this does indeed sound like special pleading, at least he does say that greed is a reason why people steal, and he makes the point that while companies have some sensitivity towards employees who skive, take drugs or gamble, but steal, and you are out the door. (But are you?) Shulman describes theft repeatedly as an ‘epidemic’, which implies it’s an illness – something you can’t help suffering from. Is it, readers may wonder, asking too much for people to be honest? Rather than explaining away theft from your employer as a cry for help because of something wrong in your childhood? Shulman writes of industries needing to ‘think outside the box about theft’. You may find it daft, even disgraceful, that theft is excused as a problem (chronic or compulsive – again, medical terms), something treatable. It’s as well to know this trend in society exists, and gets a serious, academic airing.
