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Morrigan Department Stores (The Ethics of Forced SoftwareUpgrading)Morrigan Department Stores is a chain of departmentstores in Australia, New Zealand,Canada, and the United States thatsells clothing, shoes, and similar consumer items in aretailsetting. The top managers and their staff members meet once a yearat the nationalmeeting. This year’s meeting took place in Hawaii—ageographical midpoint for them—andseveral accounting managersparticipated in a round-table discussion that went asfollows:Roberta Gardner (United States): One of our biggestproblems in our Aukland of?ce isthe high cost and seeminglyconstant need to upgrade our hardware and software. Everytime ourgovernment changes the tax laws, of course, we must acquiresoftware that re?ects those changes. But why do we need newhardware too? All this discussion of‘‘64-bit machines’’ is amystery to me, but the IT department says the hardware in theoldmachines quickly become outdated.Donalda Shadbolt (New Zealand):I’ll say! If you ask me, all these upgrades are costly,timeconsuming, and even counter-productive. I do a lot of work onspreadsheets, forexample, and constantly ask myself: ‘‘Why do Ihave to spend hours relearning how toformat a simple column ofnumbers in the newest version of Excel?’’ It takes time andeffort,it’s frustrating, and in the end, I’ve spent hours relearningskills that I already knowhowtodointheolderversion.Linda Vivianne(Canada): I know what you mean, but the newer hardware isfaster,cheaper, and more capable than the old machines. Hard driveshave moving parts in them,for example, and they eventually wearout. The newer software runs under the neweroperating systems,which are also more competent and have more built in security suchasantivirus software.Ed Ghymn (Australia): I agree with you, Linda,but I think a lot of these new capabilitiesare more hype than real.If the security software was competent, we wouldn’t need allthosepatches and upgrades in the ?rst place. And why must we upgrade sooften, just toget newer capabilities that most of us don’t evenneed?Alex McLeod (Australia): I don’t think anyone can stop themarch of progress. I think thereal problem is not the upgrades tonew software, but the fact that our company expects usto learn itwithout proper training. Personally, I don’t buy my boss’s argumentthat ‘‘you’rea professional and should learn it on your own.’’LindaVivianne (Canada): I’m also beginning to realize just whatadvantages there arein outsourcing some of our accountingapplications to cloud service providers. Thatwon’t solve all ourproblems because we all still need word processing andspreadsheetcapabilities, but at least we can let cloud providersdeal with the software upgrades for ouraccounting software. Givenhow dispersed we are, that might also make it easier for ustoconsolidate our ?nancial statements at year’s end too.

Questions:

1. Do you think that Roberta Gardner’s description of “64-bitmachines is accurate? Why or why not?
2. Many software vendors such as Microsoft, Adobe and Apple shipsoftware packages with both known and unknown defects in them. Doyou feel that it is ethical for them to do so? Why or why not?
3. Do you agree or disagree with the argument made in this casethat many hardware and software upgrade are unnecessary? Why?