Case study Have you ever wondered about what you can and cannot take home from the office Many city ...........

 Have you ever wondered about what you can and cannot take home from the office? Many city or county employees use employer-supplied pens and pencils at home and elsewhere and don''t get particularly upset about the ethics of doing so. But what should you do when the office toilet paper starts disappearing? Is this an ethics crisis? A management crisis? Both of the above?

As a city manager once advised, when employees start taking toilet paper home, you''ve got a serious problem! As it turns out, while toilet paper may not be a prime commodity for employees to take home in most organizations, there are many other commodities that seem to walk out the door regularly. A recent article in the New York Times, (July 12, 2000) points out that employee theft is a growing enterprise. A KPMG survey of 5,000 business firms found that the average loss per company between 1994 and 1998 due to the filing of false expense claims, cash advances, fraudulent checks, bad credit card charges, and medical insurance claims had jumped considerably. Theft and misuse of company credit cards by employees, for example, tripled to an average loss or more than $1.1 million in per firm.

Discussion questions

1. What would you do if you discovered that an employee in your company / government office was using his official credit card to purchase gasoline for his private vehicle?

2. Would it matter if he did this only once rather than repeatedly?

3. What can you do as a manager to Prevent the theft and misuse of official credit cards?

By: Mona Kaushal