Perspectives in fraud theories – A systematic review approach

Abstract

Background: Increasing progress is being made in the field of accounting fraud, and extensive theoretical research is needed to develop future research topics using trend analysis. Our research consists of a literature review that examines the most common fraud theories and attempts to interpret the characteristics of human behaviour that lead to fraud as well as current methods of detecting corporate fraud. Methods:   We searched the Scopus database for articles on a fraud theory. We analyse articles published between 2004 and 2022, using a keyword search for ‘Fraud Triangle’, ‘Fraud Diamond’, ‘Fraud Pentagon’, and ‘Fraud Hexagon’. Furthermore, we include all document types like articles, conference papers, reviews, book chapters, conference reviews, notes, and data papers. The investigation was limited to papers published in English from 2004 to 2022, not including the current year 2023, as documents are still being published. The last research was done at the end of January 2023. The results from the above criteria are to collect 302 papers.  We used VOS program viewer in our bibliometric analysis. Results: According to our network analysis, the Fraud Diamond theory seems to be the most functional fraud theory. According to our findings of the published articles, the main human behavioural characteristics that can lead a manager to commit fraud are the components of the fraud diamond theory: capability - opportunity - pressure - rationalization. Thus, the fraud diamond theory analyses more than the fraud triangle, pentagon, and hexagon theories. So human behavioural characteristics have a positive effect and can lead to fraud in companies. Conclusions:  Future research needs to analyse more Pentagon and Hexagon fraud theories, which are more recent and have not yet been analysed in detail. Also, future research needs to analyse more of the human behaviour characteristics related to the Pentagon and Hexagon fraud theories.