ETHICS ANDGOVERNANCE COMPUTERISED SHIPPING DOCUMENTS Fremantle Fisheries (FF) operates a fleet of fishing boats out of three ports in Western Australia — Fremantle, Bunbury and Geraidton, Each port has its own fishing fleet and all seafood caught is sold through the Fish Marketing Board, a board established by the state government. The accounting pro-cedures for all sales to the Board are centralised and handled by a computerised accounting system at FF’s head office in Perth. The majority of the company’s employees work on the fishing boats, and are paid bonuses from head office, depending on the volume, type and quality of seafood caught. This means that head office must be able to identify the source of each shipment sent to the Board. John Dorey, who was originally based in Geraldton and handled the accounting procedures at Geraldton before computerisation, is now based in Perth as manager of the computerised accounting system. His father and two sisters are still based in Geraldton and work for the company on the fishing boats, as do many friends of the family. Shipping documents are sent to the Perth head office from all three ports, and the source of the ship-ment is clearly marked in the top right-hand corner of the documents. Occasionally, however, details of the source are missing, and it is not easy to trace the source quickly. Dorey, in his capacity as manager of the system, is keen to keep the system fully operational and up to date, and has instructed the keyboard operator to insert any one of three Geraldton source codes, namely those of his father and two sisters, whenever the source code is missing from the shipping document. The keyboard operator knows that the codes given are those belonging to his boss’s family, but nevertheless complies with the request for fear that non-compliance may lead to his own dismissal. Required (a) Who are the stakeholders in this situation? (b) What are the ethical issues involved here as a result of Dorey’s request and the action taken by the keyboard operator? (c) you were the keyboard operator, what action (if any) would you take to prevent this situation occurring? Why? 358 Accounting
