Employee Theft Has Been Reported Within Ten

¶ … employee theft has been reported within ten of the companies that have been our clients. In analyzing the security practices of these ten companies, we have further learned that each of them requires its employees to wear photo identification badges while at work. In the future, therefore, we should recommend the use of such identification badges to all our clients" This argument presents us with information, from which it derives a premise and makes a recommendation.

The six years of research indicating no employee theft and the existence of the identification badges are the points that it starts with, and from this it derives the implied premise that employee theft is perfectly correlated with the issuance of identification badges. That is to say, employee theft exists or does not exist based on whether or not there are identification badges used.

The conclusion is that the methodology of preventing theft through the use of identification badges should be recommended to all clients, as it is presumed that all wish to eliminate theft. Our first question is: is the research accurate? If no theft is reported, theft may very well not exist. However, the reports could be erroneous. This could be due to either inaccuracy or a deliberate obfuscation of the existence of theft.

How likely is it that either one of these is the case? This depends on who conducts the research and whether or not there is quality control in the collection of data. The research could be conducted independently or by the organizations themselves. If the latter is true, it must be determined if they have a vested interest in the diligent collection of data on past incidents of theft.

For instance, if the organization conducting the research is a security firm responsible for managing incidents of theft when they occur, one would expect it to maintain comprehensive records. If the clients are advised but not required to report incidents of theft, many such incidents could be left unnoticed. If, for instance, the reporting firm is basing its knowledge of theft at the client companies on officially filed police reports, these may not accurately reflect theft.

The premise implied is that the existence of ID badges and the prevention of theft are directly correlated. This may not be the case; for instance, the clients could have never reported incidents of theft even before the issuance of badges. By noting that they analyzed the security practices of the firms involved, they imply that the ten firms employ several methods of theft prevention.

If, for instance, nine of the firms use security cameras and the tenth doesn't have any way of monitoring theft, and the security cameras are an effective deterrent, the ID badges could be irrelevant. All ten firms could also employ armed guards and retinal scans; we have little or no knowledge of the additional or complementary security measures that these firms take. The reporting firm makes the further mistake of assuming that its audience will assume that the correlation between badges and the absence of theft is a natural one.

The sample of ten companies that was selected could have been selected from a larger list of clients that all employ the use of identification badges. The recommendation made is automatically suspect, as it is posited as a panacea that can be expected to completely eliminate theft. This could be far from the case; the nature of the companies receiving the recommendation could be materially different from the companies reported on.

The company might be one that sells ID badges or derives some sort of income from the sale of these badges. If so, it could only be expected that they would request that all of their clients purchase ID badges. It could also indirectly benefit; for instance, the company making the recommendation could be an equipment leasing agency with a contract that specifies shared liability in the case of theft. If this is the case, identification badges would mitigate its potential costs without substantially affecting expenses.

In any organization, the cost of issuing something such as an identification badge should be based on the expected cost of theft vs. The expected cost of issuing the badges. If, for instance, the company is committed to an insurance contract which covers all its equipment, there might not necessarily be a theft-prevention incentive in the issuance of such badges. The issuance of identification badges should be a budgeting decision; if the company wants to prevent theft, it can't contribute more money to theft prevention than will be saved.

If I were to have the company issuing this statement change it, I would make it more substantive unless the company.