The perception of Fraud factors by the Lebanese higher educational sector

Abstract

Fraud is the performance of unlawful activities that cause immense damages to all entities in general and to the higher educational sectors organizations in specific. In our work, we propose to investigate the specific factors, frequency, and areas that encourage any type of occupational Fraud to arise within the accredited Lebanese higher educational sector that consists of the Universities operating in Lebanon. We believe that this research topic is important nowadays in order to shed a light over this concern and discover the factors that cause this ascending exploitation among universities and therefore threatening the Lebanese higher educational sector as a whole. This investigation is progressed by reviewing universities personnel perspective about Fraud and therefore highlighting the most common fields, types, and motives of fraudulent acts that might occur within this sector. In an attempt to get these findings, a questionnaire and several interviews were used in this research targeting comptrollers, managers, officials, staff, and chief financial officers from different universities who are directly and indirectly responsible of all comptroller related tasks. The study imposes formulating well-structured open-ended questions that can enhance the investigation about this matter. The questions main purpose is to evaluate the opinion of these responsible parties about the specific aspects that might lead an employee to commit fraud, forms of the fraud, and the most common fields or departments that may provide chances for it. Questions also seek to evaluate whether the universitys values, rules, and procedures influence the internal controls used in preventing fraud and how an observant reacts upon them. Similar studies were performed by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners showed that educational institutions are as equal subject to occupational fraud as any business institution due to many threats. Results showed that not only opportunity, rationalization, and pressure are the main variables affecting the workers decision to commit fraud but also his standards, character, and morals play a major role towards them. Furthermore, we recognized that the fear of reporting is as well a main hidden cause to encourage an impostor to persist with his activities. However, the information added by this research can provide several notions for future researches.