Wells Fargo Week 1 Consequentialist Ethics

Did you know that 58% of employers have fired workers for Internet and email misuse? And 48% justify employee video monitoring as an effort to “counter theft and violence?” According to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” of which 304 U.S. companies participated in, computer-monitoring results have led to the highest cause of employee termination. These companies used several tactics to eavesdrop on employees while claiming to be managing productivity or for security purposes. Some argue that surveillance is absolutely necessary to help protect and grow a business; others argue that employee and customer rights come first. However, companies that use such tactics often violate the privacy of individuals, exploit their private information and even punish those that do not conform to their standards.

Utilitarianism also known as the principle of utility is an ethical theory proposed by early philosophers. This theory implies that actions are only judged by its consequences whether they are good or bad. One should perform a particular action because it will yield the best results for all. This approach also analysis the cost and benefit relationship. The downfall with this theory is that not everyone benefits (Fremgen, 2016).

Utilitarianism is a type of theory that was developed to come up with a proper course of action that maximizes the joy of the stakeholders involved. While consequentialism is defined as the view that value of an action derives solely from the value of its consequences. Today, consequentialism is the form that usually takes form. Utilitarianism tries to evaluate the moral worth of an action after one has considered the actual consequences, the foreseen consequences, and the anticipated consequences. In the business environment, situations arise that require the application of utilitarianism ethics. Decision makers are placed on notice and utilitarianism takes priority over the

Bank of America is one of the largest banks in the nation. It is a multinational company and it is recognized by its high revenue value. Unfortunately, Bank of America has endured many complaints and harsh views regarding their lack of ethics. Ethical issues occur when there is a blatant disregard to implement integrity, trust, and responsibility. In some financial institutions, ethical matters are displayed in the way the consumers are treated. Within the past nine years, Bank of America has diminished all of their ethical promises by revealing customer information without their permission; discriminating against consumers based on their race; and manipulating overdraft fees in order to benefit the bank. In order to assess these problems, it is vital to recognize what Bank of America claims to stand for and determine where their most concerning issues are generated from.

The second ethical theory is altruism. Altruism is the belief that an action is morally right if the consequences of the action are more favorable than unfavorable to everyone except the agent that performed the action. In altruism, a company would pay its employees an excessive or larger wage than what the company can financially withstand and that would be financially irresponsible. Even though the employees would be paid a higher wage, the company would collapse under its finances and when the company fails everyone is unemployed. The greed of the company is vicious, and the greed of the employee is also vicious. If a business owner must pay their employees all their profits, it defeats the purpose of creating a business in the first place.

On September 8 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) announced that it was taking an enforcement action against Wells Fargo Bank . Wells Fargo is a Fortune 100 company and one of the "Big Four Banks" of the United States. Investigations conducted by the Bureau revealed that employees of the bank created unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts across the country to meet sales goals. Over the years, the bank’s employees opened over 1.5 million fraudulent bank accounts and 0.5 million fake credit card accounts for customers, to meet sales targets and obtain bonuses. The affected consumers, were being harmed by the associated charges and fees for these accounts. The fees include insufficient funds or overdraft fees for the deposit accounts and annual fees for credit card accounts.

behavior. Most of our political laws are governed by this virtue. In the four discussions of

Over the few decades, Wells Fargo had built up a reputation detaching itself from the likes of Wall Street by putting their customers first before money. However, one cannot help but think that Wells Fargo put money before customers as their aggressive sales goals led to the opening of unauthorized accounts without customer knowledge. During this fiasco, which dates back to 2011, Wells Fargo employees had opened as many as 2 million of false accounts in real customer’s names without the proper consent. An integral part of the problem were senior executives and management staff involved. Either they overlooked this growing scandal by turning a blind eye, or partook in it themselves, but both ways there is responsibility to be claimed, and guilt to be measured here.

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory that judges an action on its outcomes and aims to maximize happiness. This means finding the action that generates the “greatest good for the greatest number”.

Utilitarianism is the moral doctrine that we should always act to produce the greatest possible balance of good over bad for everyone affected by our actions (Shaw & Barry, 62).

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that seeks to define right and wrong actions based solely on the consequences they produce. By utilitarian standards, an act is determined to be right if and

On the other hand, ethical egoism is a theory that prescribes moral obligation, where all people should be motivated out of self interest (Rachels, 2003, p. 70). This means that every person ought to act in a way that is best for him/herself. Ethical egoism claims that it is moral for all of an individual’s actions to be based on self-interest, without concerning him/herself with the interests of others. In fact, this thought may be continued by stating that altruism is, therefore, personally hindering and even demeaning (Brink, 1997, p. 122). Hence, ethical egoism must consequently mean that actions taken in an individual’s self-interest are moral actions, and actions taken that are not self-beneficial to an individual are immoral and should, as a result, be avoided.

Well Fargo is currently being sued over 185 Million Dollars and 5,300 were fired for making fake account.

Hiding or divulging information: Goldman bet against their clients several times. They knew material information on certain investment; however, they never communicated that to their clients because they were making money off them.

Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche