White papers are popular items on many company websites. These papers often describe a case study using the firm's product or service. It will usually describe how that product or service helped solve a specific problem. These documents often serve as marketing tools. They describe the product in detail and provide an example of its successful application. These documents can also provide opinions and general advice from the company staff.
With many white papers on the web, the question addressed in this study is whether there is plagiarism in those documents. Since white papers tend to address a firm's unique application of its product, one would think that white papers would be original works, thus containing very little plagiarism. To narrow our focus, this study will concentrate on the accounting services industry. We will examine firms of different sizes based on revenue, number of employees, etc. An extensive search on business publication databases (ABI/Informed, EBSCO, and Business Source Primer) revealed no documents on the topic of plagiarism in corporate white papers. Thus this literature review will consist of works that could provide insights into this subject.
There is an extensive amount of work on the subject of plagiarism in the academic setting. Iyer and Eastman (2006) examined academic dishonesty (including plagiarism) among college students with consideration for a variety of contextual factors. Utilizing convenience samples from two universities, they surveyed college students on the topics of academic dishonesty, self-esteem, and innovativeness. Several hypothesizes were analyzed, two were of particular relevance to our study. It was noted that non-business students engaged in more academic dishonesty than business s ...