How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds
Make deeds ill done!
—William Shakespeare, from King John (Act 4, Scene 2)
The Motivation, Opportunity, and Ability (MOA) framework is among my all-time, go-to favorites for management practice. When I find myself, a colleague, or a student not showing up in productive ways, this framework invites me to be specifically curious instead of generically frustrated.
Is it a challenge of motivation (drive), opportunity (external constraint), or ability (internal capacity)? Each answer offers different strategies to reduce or remove the barriers, and clear the path to higher performance.
But there’s a shadow-side to this framework that’s also worth attention. Instead of revealing pathways to progress, the “fraud triangle” names conditions that lure people into violating positions of trust. As the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (AS 2401) describes the trilogy:
Three conditions generally are present when fraud occurs. First, management or other employees have an incentive or are under pressure, which provides a reason to commit fraud. Second, circumstances exist – for example, the absence of controls, ineffective controls, or the ability of management to override controls – that provide an opportunity for a fraud to be perpetrated. Third, those involved are able to rationalize committing a fraudulent act.
Motivation, opportunity, and ability, again.
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The fraud triangle evolved from early work by psychologists Svend H. Riemer (1941) and Donald Cressey (1953). Riemer analyzed 100 embezzlement cases in Stockholm, Sweden. Cressey interviewed 133 individuals in Illinois, Indiana, and California who had demonstrated “criminal violation of financial trust.” Both found a constellation of forces in play.
While neither Riemer nor Cressey used the term “fraud triangle,” later refinement and reframing made the term part of basic training for auditors, financial leaders, and investigators of financial crime (Tickner and Button 2021). Today, board members, chief executives, and financial managers are warned to watch for signs of pressure or rationalization, and reduce opportunity through rigorous financial controls.
The fraud triangle is a bleak but important framework for predicting and preventing poor financial stewardship. But, as with MOA, I also find it useful in other domains.
For example, it helps me understand why smart and capable people (professionals, academic peers, and students) increasingly share GenAI content as their own: they’re under significant pressure, the tool is everywhere and difficult to track, and they can justify the shortcut to pace and polish for its convenience and because, they rationalize, everybody’s doing it.
While GenAI writing is not always or necessarily fraud, it can certainly be a violation of cognitive and relational trust. The fraud triangle helps reveal what leads people to stray.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Governance
Governance involves structuring, sustaining, and overseeing the organization’s purposes, resources, and goals (often through boards or trustees).
Framework of the Week: Motivation Opportunity Ability (MOA)
The Motivation Opportunity Ability (MOA) framework offers three ways to interrogate the actions or inactions of an individual or a group: motivation to achieve the intended action or outcome; opportunity provided (or blocked) by the external environment related to that action or outcome; and ability or internal capacity to accomplish the action or outcome.
Photo by 愚木混株 Yumu on Unsplash
Sources
Cressey, Donald R. 1953. Other People’s Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement. Free Press.
Riemer, Svend H. 1941. “Embezzlement: Pathological Basis.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1931-1951) 32 (4): 411–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/1136639.
Tickner, Peter, and Mark Button. 2021. “Deconstructing the Origins of Cressey’s Fraud Triangle.” Journal of Financial Crime 28 (3): 722–31. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-10-2020-0204.