IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/jecxxx/v20y2012i03ns0218495812500148.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding Small Business Scams

Author

Listed:
  • MICHAEL T. SCHAPER

    (School of Management, Curtin University, GPO Box U 1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845, Australia)

  • PAUL WEBER

    (School of Management, Curtin University, GPO Box U 1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845, Australia)

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the current state of knowledge about small business scams. A scam is a form of dishonest action, based upon an invitation to participate in an activity. Victims are encouraged, mislead or induced to voluntarily interact with the perpetrator, and ultimately to willingly surrender over money, information or other valuable resources. Common forms of scams directed towards small business include phishing, false business valuations and sales, fake overpayments, false directory and advertisement listings, bust-outs, blowing, cramming, advance fee fraud and misleading self-employment projects. The limited research evidence available to date suggests that small enterprises are particularly vulnerable to these types of criminal activity, are less inclined to report such events, are likely to be subject to repeat attacks, and are particularly susceptible to online scams. This occurs because small businesses often lack the in-house skills, resources and reporting arrangements needed to effectively detect and prevent scams. The paper also briefly examines the entrepreneurial nature of scammers, and explores some of the emergent literature on the psychology of small business scams that may explain scam propensity. Strategies for combating and avoiding scams are discussed, as are suggestions for future research directions in the area.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael T. Schaper & Paul Weber, 2012. "Understanding Small Business Scams," Journal of Enterprising Culture (JEC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 20(03), pages 333-356.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:jecxxx:v:20:y:2012:i:03:n:s0218495812500148
    DOI: 10.1142/S0218495812500148
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218495812500148
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0218495812500148?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Reurink, Arjan, 2016. "Financial fraud: A literature review," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/5, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    2. Hervé Laroche & Véronique Steyer & Christelle Théron, 2019. "How Could You be so Gullible? Scams and Over-Trust in Organizations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 641-656, December.
    3. Radiah Othman & Rashid Ameer, 2022. "In employees we Trust: Employee fraud in small businesses," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 189-213, June.
    4. David J. Scheaf & Matthew S. Wood, 2022. "Entrepreneurial Fraud: A Multidisciplinary Review and Synthesized Framework," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 46(3), pages 607-642, May.
    5. Erkan Alsu & Murat Karahan & Sadik Gozek, 2016. "Determinants of the Entrepreneurship Trends of University Students (A Field Study for Gaziantep)," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 6(12), pages 552-579, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:jecxxx:v:20:y:2012:i:03:n:s0218495812500148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/jec/jec.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.