Question

Jane, the store manager of Comfort Futons, notice that the amount of time the two bookkeepers were spending on accounts receivable, accounts payable, and cash receipts was increasing due to the store's increase in sales. A friend of Jane's who is also a store manager suggested that she might want to have some special journal designed that would reduce the amount of work involved in the day-to-day bookkeeping at her store. Jane approached her bookkeepers and asked them to come up with a proposal for special journals. During lunch, the bookkeepers discussed that this would be a lot of work and Bookkeeper A indicated this was not in his job description. Bookkeeper B told him not to worry because she would just copy pages of special journals from her accounting textbook and they could submit them as their own design. They agreed and made plans to scan the journals into word, and submit them to Jane the following morning.

1) Do you think this solution is unethical? Why or why not?

2) In using the special journals from the accounting textbook, what possible problems can you foresee?

3) If you were Jane, how would you respond to the plan?

Answer 1

1) Yes, the solution is unethical. Presenting somebody else's journal design as their own work amounts to plagiarism and it is not acceptable. Even if the journal design is conducive for the business, due credit to the author of the textbook should be given.

2) If the special journals from the accounting textbooks are used , the following problems might arise:

- The journals will not be designed according to the requirements of the business and may not be useful.

- Since the journals will not be tailor made for the business, it will increase the working hours due to complexity.

3) If I were Jane, I would take a look at the journals and analyze whether they are relevant to the business model. Further, I would also ensure that the journals serve the goal of saving time.