My D experienced this scenario at work - she graduated from college in 2013. She was working with a co-worker who graduated in 2014 from a well-known, top-rated institution. She discovered the co-worker plagiarized a work assignment - copied it off the internet. She talked to her co-worker and also reported the incident to their supervisor. She doesn’t know what happened next, but the co-worker is still employed.
To me, as related to an employee, it depends on the context. Let’s say I asked someone for a one pager on some aspect of a piece of healthcare rule that’s coming later this year. Let’s say he copied it from somewhere and gave it to me - as long as it was what I was looking for, it’s fine because my expectation was not that he writes something original, but provides me the facts for what I was looking for.
CF: When a college freshman in October gives me the excuse that his high school didn’t teach proper citation, I believe him. If it’s April, or when he’s a sophomore, I don’t. That’s why it depends – it’s not a black and white issue. And that’s why it’s important to document these things. I once reported a college student for plagiarism, and was told I was the 3rd prof to make the accusation; the kid was either suspended or expelled. If profs didn’t report it, then it’s a lot easier for these kids to get away with it.
Work situations are different than college – I would expect a college graduate to know about plagiarism. I would expect a recent graduate to clarify with the boss whether citation is necessary, because in some cases – as Dad-of-3 points out – correct citation may not be needed.
I’ve been plagiarized myself – I was once a reporter and another reporter at a smaller paper used one of my articles, almost verbatim – and submitted it for an award, no less! I was furious. I don’t remember what happened to the plagiarist – my editors dealt with it, and this was 30 years ago.
Here’s an interesting question. DS was asked to provide a writing sample where he was basically supposed to tout the NGO for foundation money. So he asked me if it would be plagiarism to use language from their website when describing the NGO. I thought it should be fine, in that context. Agree? Disagree?
I wouldn’t be upset if the employee copied it from a webpage in that case, but I’d want to see quotemarks, and I’d want the source. My motto is, always click the link! Sometimes the link is to an unreliable source.
Plagiarism is a mainstay in the military in regards to writing SOPs and policies. the thought process is why reinvent the wheel if someone else has already done it. The issue is that the SOP won’t be modified for the different aspects of your job or unit from the copied SOP. I usually say it isn’t “copy and paste” but “copy, change and paste”.
However, there are specific military schools where plagiarism is very frowned upon and will end your career.
@mathmom
In general, plagiarism is misappropriating someone else’s work without attribution, regardless of whether it’s someone’s exact words or ideas. He should at least attribute the language and make reference to the source. Otherwise, if someone later sees the exact language on the website, it may reflect badly.
He should just ask the person who requested the writing sample. If he actually were employed by the organization, and he was tasked with preparing communications on behalf of the organization, it obviously wouldn’t be plagiarism to borrow language from the organization’s prior communications. That’s called efficiency and consistency. But they may want something different in the job interview context. He should just ask.
Citations are helpful in order to buttress the validity of the information. But for a report meant for limited, internal consumption there is nothing wrong with copying word for word. But simply providing information without giving any idea where it came from really isn’t very informative.