Philip Morris International Case

Philip Morris International (PMI) is the leading international tobacco company. The company sells products in about 180 countries. In 2010, they held 17 percent market share of the international cigarette outside of the U.S. However negative workplace deviant behavior is a very serious problem in the big company, especially in manufacture firms.

Dishonesty was the biggest deviant behavior in PMI Company. First, I am going to talk about dishonesty. Coffin reports that employee dishonesty is the fastest growing business problem for many companies. Employees have the best access to all company assets. They know where cash is stored. They are often able to get keys, passwords, codes, and safe combinations. Employee theft and mistake can account for the majority of losses. Employees steal in different ways, but the result is always the same: loss of profits, low morale, and even the demise of a business.

Martin King, vice president in PMI, found employees feel that dishonesty is a form of compensation and retribution. If they feel they are not being fairly, dishonest behavior will be a way to even the balance. Theft is one kind of dishonest behavior in the PMI. Martin King drew a map to show how personal factors and workplace environment cause the theft.

He found personal factors include motives, attitudes, and low self-control, pressures, and opportunity and low risk to steal.

Motive means the potential gain and uses of a given asset

Opportunity means the ability to quickly and safely remove the asset from its location

Personal risk means possibility of being caught and fired if employees steal the asset.

If the risk of being caught is low, employees are more like to steal, and theft behavior are more like to happen.

PMI Company show that theft is not tolerated in order to prevent employees from stealing. All employees in the company, from the CEO down, should know the security risks faced by the company. And the company encourages employees report the incidents and reward for doing so. Other way Martin King use to decrease the stealing is to control the cost of stealing. Because the behavior will be not take place, if only pay more and more on this.