Earlier quoted context omitted.
soft fraud mentality This isn’t about fraud anymore. It’s about how suspiciously managers want to view their employees. That’s a separate issue (but not one directed at employees).
If a company says you have permission to spend money on something for a purpose, but employees are abusing that to spend money on something that clearly violates that stated purpose, that’s into fraud territory. This is why I call it the soft fraud mentality: When people see some fraudulent spending and decide that it’s fine because they don’t think the policy is important. Managers didn’t care. It didn’t come out of…
As you mentioned, setting policy that isn’t abused is hard. But abuse isn’t fraud—it’s abuse—and abuse is its own rabbit hole that covers a lot of these maladaptive behaviors you are describing.