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CASE STUDY IV-8
Mary Morrison’s Ethical
Issue (Revised)
Mary Morrison, a second-semester sophomore business
major at Big State University, was unpacking the new PC
that her family had given her for Christmas when she dis-
covered that, except for the Windows operating system,
no software was included with the machine. Although the
new PC was an adequate computer, it was an inexpensive
machine, and one way that the store kept the price low
was to not include software. Mary was concerned because
she knew that she would need a good word processor, a
spreadsheet program, and some presentation software,
and she thought that this software would be included with
the computer.
According to her friends, Microsoft Office
Professional was the recommended suite of software for
business students. Mary quickly checked around the uni-
versity and found that she could buy Microsoft Office
Professional at the special price of $199. However, a
friend, Frank Taylor, offered to let her copy his Microsoft
Office Professional onto the new machine. Mary was
uneasy about accepting Frank’s offer because she had
learned in her computer literacy class that copying copy-
righted software was illegal and was tantamount to stealing
it. She told Frank that she needed to think about it. Frank
could not understand her hesitation. “Everybody does it,”
he explained.
Mary’s Background
Mary’s family was reasonably well-to-do. Her mother and
father had met at Big State University and had gotten mar-
ried when they both graduated. Mary was the oldest child
and had two younger brothers. Mary’s parents valued edu-
cation and expected to send all of their children to college.
Although they had a comfortable income and had saved
money for their children’s education for years, the rapidly
rising cost of a college education forced them to establish a
home equity loan that they could use to help with college
expenses. Their oldest son would be in college next year,
and the financial crunch would increase when they had two
children in college at the same time. That situation would
last several years.
Mary grew up to be a good student and graduated
from high school in the top third of her class. Because of
the high cost, Mary did not consider going to a private
school, but she and her parents had always expected her to
attend Big State University so she started there in the fall
after her high school graduation.
Mary’s parents paid her tuition and room and board
and provided her an additional amount each semester to
cover books and incidentals, and they expected her to live
within that amount. She worked a few hours a week in the
college bookstore at minimum wage to provide more
spending money and had saved several hundred dollars
that she had planned to use to pay for a Spring Break trip to
Florida with a group of her friends. She could use part of
that money to pay for Microsoft Office, but she would have
to work extra hours at the bookstore to afford her Spring
Break trip.Mary’s Analysis
Mary considered herself to be an ethical person, and she
was uneasy about accepting Frank’s offer to let her copy
his software, so she decided to consider the pros and cons
of this decision. Her choices were to accept Frank’s offer
to install his Microsoft Office or to buy it for $199.
Mary considered the following rationale for accepting
Frank’s offer:- Although it was illegal, there was no chance that she
would get caught. - It would not cost Frank anything, and although
Microsoft would be losing revenue, it would go to
Bill Gates, who already had more millions than he
could spend.
Copyright © 2007 by E. W. Martin. This case replaces an earlier
case with a similar name: “Mary Morrison’s Ethical Dilemma” © 2000.