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Predicting wage theft in organizations
Journal article

Predicting wage theft in organizations

Abstract

Employees naturally expect to be paid for their work; moreover, they expect to be paid fully and on time. Unfortunately, this does not always happen; this phenomenon is known as “wage theft”. Despite wage theft being of paramount importance to employees who experience it, this topic has received scant attention in the human resources management (HRM) research literature. This paper therefore describes the prevalence of wage theft, or the illegal underpayment of employees, and offers several propositions regarding its antecedents, with specific attention to roles of both organizations and managers. This paper also identifies specific strategies that HR managers can use to detect and curtail wage theft and it ends with policy recommendations and suggestions for future research.

Authors

Connelly CE

Journal

Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 35, No. 4,

Publisher

Elsevier

Publication Date

December 1, 2025

DOI

10.1016/j.hrmr.2025.101103

ISSN

1053-4822

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