Workplace factors predisposing employees to connive with customers in electricity theft in Indian power distribution sector

Abstract

Workplace Factors Predisposing Employees to Connive with Customers in Electricity Theft in Indian Power Distribution Sector The biggest challenge facing Indian power distribution sector today is high Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses. While some of the losses are technical, most are commercial- resulting from electricity theft and corruption. A major chunk of the commercial losses in India is attributed to electricity theft. The Indian Government and power utilities have taken a lot of measures to curb electricity theft, but many of its technology driven measures have fallen short of the promised potential. Despite that, majority of the theft-combat interventions are still designed around technology, grossly ignoring the workplace factors. Given the fact that electricity theft in India happens in connivance with employees of power utilities, exploration of the workplace factors becomes all the more important. Since, electricity theft by consumers with the assistance of utility employees, constitute a dominant form of commercial losses, it is called employee theft. The literature is replete with multiple and distinct perspectives on employee theft. These perspectives have origin in sociology, psychology, criminology, organizational science etc. Though, each perspective contributes to the understating of employee theft, none paints a complete picture. Accepeting the idea that each perspective may carry truth, it becomes important to consider all, hence a need was felt to integrate the existing perspspectives for developing an effecticve intervention to check employee theft. Before doing so, there was a need to check whether the theft inducing workplace factors, as specified in the above perspectives hold true for power utilities or not. That’s what this study attempted. In addition, it explored how the workplace factors predispose employees to connive with customers in electricity theft. In doing so, the study made use of the Grounded Theory Methodology. vi The employees of state power utility were interviewed to generate empirical data. The data so generated were analyzed using the coding processes of Grounded Theory- initial, focused, axial and theoretical coding. This analysis resulted in generation of theoretical categories, which represented the workplace factors that predispose employees to connive with customers in electricity theft. Qualitative associative network for each emerged category was developed, and a conceptual framework detailing how do the workplace factors predisposing employees to connive with customers, was suggested, which could be tested in the future work.