A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR INVENTORY FRAUD DETECTION: INTEGRATING FORENSIC CONTROLS, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES, AND BEHAVIORAL INDICATORS

Abstract

Digital supply chains have significantly escalated the sophistication of internal fraud schemes targeting enterprise inventory assets. While scholarship has advanced across forensic controls, digital detection tools, and human behavioral signs, these streams remain fragmented, leaving organizations without an interconnected defense mechanism. This conceptual paper addresses this gap by presenting an integrative framework that structures forensic governance, digital technologies, and behavioral indicators into a collaborative oversight system. Developed through a multidisciplinary synthesis of recent accounting, audit, and information systems literature, the study evaluates how digital tools automate transaction tracking, how forensic oversight structures verification, and how behavioral tracking captures underlying human risk patterns. The primary theoretical contribution is a three-layer architecture anchored in the Fraud Diamond, the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) model, and digital forensic governance principles. This architecture maps out direct propositions linking proactive forensic verification directly to the mitigation of technology-enabled misconduct. Practically, the framework shifts focus from individual tools toward an integrated oversight package, outlining boundary constraints like system maturity while offering a strategic roadmap for empirical validation in inventory-intensive sectors.