Accounting Information Systems 7th Edition by Cynthia Heagy,Constance Lehmann

Exercise 8

Malcolm Trenton, an ambitious senior manager, routinely took administrative work home in the evening because he spent much of the day in conferences with other managers, subordinates, or clients. He was as surprised as everyone else when a vice-president explained at a hurriedly called meeting that details of an impending merger had been leaked to a corporate raider. The leak had embarrassed the company and undermined merger negotiations. The vice-president announced that he had instructed the internal auditors to conduct a thorough investigation into the source of the leak and that the culprit would be dealt with severely. All company personnel, including executive-level managers, were requested to cooperate fully with the investigation.
Two days later, Trenton's wife left him and filed for divorce. Some time later, Trenton learned that his wife had been seen with one of the corporate raider's staff. She bought a condominium in a fashionable part of town and was last seen driving an expensive automobile.
Required:
a. Discuss the potential dangers of taking work out of the office.
b. Much has been written in recent years about opportunities for people to work at home. Avoiding long commuting times, safety from downtown crime, being able to care for children, and reducing the need for expensive downtown office space have all been cited as advantages to employers and employees. Dispersion of the work force is not considered a problem because telecommunications technology enables people to keep in touch hour by hour during the day. Do you think that the internal control implications of working at home might be serious enough to dissuade companies from considering work-at-home schemes?