Case studies

For four years, Valerie Thorpe was Director of Accounting for Taurus Construction. She was fired by the company's owner, Vic Bullard, when she refused to falsify accounting entries. Bullard's directive would have lowered profits, thereby deceiving his business partner and committing tax evasion. Until her firing late in the spring of 2011, Valerie had a few concerns about Bullard's lack of ethics in his business dealings. However, she has not questioned him previously because of her own emotional condition after the unexpected death of her husband. During the spring 2011 semester in graduate school, Valerie was inspired when her classmates recounted their own experiences of resigning from jobs because of unethical managers and owners. Valerie had thought of resigning from Taurus; but, Bullard fired her first. Six months after her firing, Valerie is seriously contemplating whether she should report Bullard's tax evasion to the Internal Revenue Service.

Field Based Research. Interviews with the case protagonist.

The case is suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses in business ethics, accounting ethics, entrepreneurship, income tax accounting and an undergraduate auditing class.

This is a real-life case applying ethical frameworks coverage of which can be challenging as students perceive those theories and frameworks as “dry.”

Cutts Floral Distributors, founded in 2004 by Dave Lambe, was a floral wholesaler in Lincoln, Nebraska. The firm became a top wholesaler in the Lincoln area and had expanded its delivery range (all accessed by the company's hand delivery system) up to 100 miles outside of Lincoln. The company credited its success to the expertise of its founder, a professor of horticultural entrepreneurship, and to the company's commitment to customer service. Dave Lambe came to believe that Cutts had exhausted the local market and began looking for growth opportunities within driving distance. Proposed locations for expansion included Kansas City (MO/KS), Denver (CO), and St Joseph (MO). The case provides an in-depth look at Cutts, its competitive advantages, and strategy as the firm faced a critical decision, made more difficult by the uncertainties of the economic recession. This case encourages students to think critically in order to answer the case's central questions: “Should Cutts expand? If so, where?” The complexity of an expansion decision and the multitude of factors that may influence an entrepreneur's decision to expand are illustrated throughout the case.

Dean Adams was given notice to develop an online program with the School of Business Administration as a prototype of online education for the rest of the University. A major task which faced the Dean involved working with University information technology (IT) staff and faculty to choose a learning management system (LMS) to support the online program. After talking with the Chief Information Officer at Seacoast University and appointing a committee made up of IT staff and faculty, the Dean was presented with the committee's recommendation that focussed on two major decisions: first, choosing the LMS product for the University, and second, choosing to locate the LMS product and server either on-campus or off-campus. In the course of considering whether or not to accept the committee's recommendations, Dean Adams weighed the evaluations and justifications as outlined by the committee in the context of Seacoast University's IT situation.