Reference no: EM133051079

Stealing At Work

Previously my family operated a garment wholesale company; we would buy in bulk overseas and then sell to local clothes shops specialising in affordable medium-quality T-shirts, jeans, tops and the like. Staff had never been the best - punctuality and quality of work issues - so needed a lot of supervision so we had kept their basic pay at the same level since 2018 and with MCO we even cut it by 20% for some categories of workers. Recently, during stock count day, we found out stocks had gone missing and when we confronted staff, they pretended as if nothing was going on. The loss amounted to RM800.

My parents decided to have a CCTV system installed over the following weekend, a non-working day, and also introduced a bag check at the end of the working day. The employees were not informed of the CCTV cameras and the bag check was actually meant as a distraction. After only a few days, the thief was identified, and being caught on camera for all to see, there was no denying anything. Mrs Burn, the thief, begged us to leave the police out of it, that she would repay or return the stolen garments and that she would never do it again. When asked about her motives, she said she had financial difficulties due to one of her children having contracted the COVID-19 virus and her husband had been retrenched.

Though company policy says cases like this have to be handed over to the appropriate authorities, we decided not to follow policy. On the other hand, we fired her on the spot and told her to leave the company immediately. We would still pay the days she had worked during the month.

Q: Resolve the ethics issue case by using American Accounting Association (AAA) model.

*Use and list down the 7 Steps for analysis in 7 sentences as well.