ABSTRACT
Thefts by workers from their place of employment have been a source of concern to owners, managers, and labor representatives from the earliest beginnings of productive systems. Even sociologists, with their empirical, analytical, and theoretical interest in normative behavior, have been conspicuously neglectful of the non-legal activities of industrial operatives. In an attempt to bridge this hiatus, this report, which is derived from a more comprehensive study of blue-collar theft, focuses on the cognitive dimensions of pilfering. Blue-collar crime, the more generic concept, embraces the whole array of illegal acts which are committed by non-salaried workers and which involve the operative's place of employment either as the victim. Blue-collar theft, one form of blue-collar crime, may be defined simply as the illegal or unauthorized utilization of facilities or removal and conversion to one's own use of company property or personal property located on the plant premises by non-salaried personnel employed in the plant.
