Martha Stewart: The Five Biggest Corporate Scandal

One issue of ethical business would be in regards to company loyalty. An employee that sees a fraudulent practice and then reports the wrongdoing to the general public or an authority figure is known as a whistleblower. Sissela Bok states that “whistleblowing makes public a disagreement with an authority or a majority view” (Bok, pg. 412). An example of whistleblowing in the real world would be in Bok’s Case C. In Case C, a newly hired assistant director of admissions has heard rumors of tampered transcripts and surrogate test takers specifically for student athletes.

She took an opportunity when she received word that the company, ImClone was about to crash to remove 4,000 shares where she would avoid losing about 46k dollars. Investigation into the case and begun and developments in the case had started surfacing on the truths in the case. On December 27th, Martha Stewart told investigators that she was traveling on a trip when she called to check her messages and her broker had stated that the company had fallen under $60 per share so he sold them. According to the literature, Martha Stewart claims that she had set up a “stop-loss” order, which states if the shares fell below $60/share that they would be sold. Unfortunely, this was not the case when the broker’s assistant came forward and told Merrill Lynch that his boss had told him to lie about the “stop-loss” order. He started cooperating with federal investigators and later was fined and fired from the company along with his boss for the involvement they had in the scandal. On the other hand, after everything started falling apart, Martha Stewart later resigned from her board at the New York Stock Exchange. Later in August, investigators begin building their case against Martha Stewart in her involvement with inside trading and lying about the “stop-loss” order. Investigators reached out to Stewart’s lawyers but later made a statement that Martha Stewart would be pleading the Fifth Amendment and keeping quit about anything to do with the case. As a result, the SEC filed charges against Martha Stewart, and she was found guilty on four counts of obstructing justice and lying to federal investigators. On June 17, 2004, Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in prison and two years of supervised release along with a healthy fine attached. Till this day, Martha Stewart pleads her innocence and states that she did not do anything wrong. She is currently making a comeback with her company and

Ethics, in business, refers to moral principles and standards that define acceptable behavior in the world of business. Ethical decisions foster trust among individuals and in business relationships. Recognizing ethical issues is important in the workplace. An ethical issue is an identifiable problem requiring a person or organization to choose from among several actions that may be evaluated as ethical or unethical. When you’re determining is a situation is ethical or not, there are three factors to take into consideration. Individual factors, organizational factors, and opportunity. Individual factors are sets of principles that describe what a person believes are the right way to behave. Organizational factors include the influence of managers, coworkers, and the work group. Opportunity is a set of conditions that punish unfavorable behavior or reward favorable behavior. “Target thrives on competing to win in the marketplace. We compete and negotiate actively, but always with integrity. Taking advantage of anyone by manipulating or concealing

After reviewing the federal statue under 15 U.S.C. 78U-1 – civil penalties for insider trading, it provides clarity on why Martha Stewart was not charged with insider trading. On December 27, 20, 2004 Martha Stewart sold ImClone stock based on information she received from her stock broker who stated that the CEO of the company Sam Waksal was dumping his $5 million stake in the company. Stewart owed 4000 shares of ImClone, which was worth $45,673. Even though Stewart’s actions were somewhat suspicious, there was no proof that she knew that the FDA did not grant the approval for the drug Erbitux. She may have been friends with the CEO, but there was no proof of him contacting her or vice versa regarding the FDA decision; In order to charge Stewart

Martha Stewart was born on August 3, 1941. She was born in Jersey City New Jersey. She is 74 years old and is a author, entertainer, chef, home designer, and a lifestyle guru. She is the 2nd out of 6th children. She went to Barnard college in Manhatten. Martha was a model since age 13. Martha since she was young has had many television apperances. Martha met Andy Stewart a yale student. Martha and Andy married in 1961.

Martha, born as Martha Kostyra in 1941, began her path to fame as a model at thirteen years old. At a young age she had a fixation for cooking, decorating, and gardening. While attending college at Barnard College in Manhattan, she met Andy Stewart who she later married. After having one daughter, Alexis, Martha Stewart began working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. She worked as a stockbroker until 1972.

On January 20, 2004, jury selection launched the trial of Martha Stewart, Chief Creative Officer and former Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO). Nine charges filed by the Federal Grand Jury in New York and the SEC relate to Stewart’s personal sale of $228,000 in ImClone Systems, Inc. stock on December 27, 2001, one day before regulators rejected the biotech company’s cancer drug (Erbitux) and sent its stock tumbling. Communications records show that Stewart placed an 11-minute cellphone call to her assistant at 1:31 P.M. EST on December 27 to check her messages. The call was registered moments after Stewart’s chartered private jet

Martha Stewart ended up selling all her shares of imclone systems stock and at the time Imclone had been waiting for the FDA to approve one of its products a cancer treatment drug. Then a day after Stewart had sold her shares of imclone they had announced that the FDA had rejected the cancer treatment product. That resulted the stock price dropping 16 percent to 46 dollars per share it was determined that in selling Martha Stewart had avoided thousands of dollars in losses Leading to court the SEC security filed fraud charges against Martha Stewart and Bacanovic in the case they charged both with lying in their statements not accepting their guilt about imclone trading. During the time Backonvic had been a broker and one of his other clients happened to be imclone CEO Samuel Waksal and he too had learned the FDA was going to reject their cancer treatment

Strong ethics are the core of a positive workplace culture. Within the last two decades the United States has been rocked by political, corporate, and technology scandals. The most famous political scandal within the last two decades was the Monica Lewinsky scandal with the former 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton. This scandal was a serious event that ultimately led to the House trying to impeach the President. The House felt like the President was not being truthfully about the affair with Ms. Lewinsky, and as the President of the United States there are certain standards the one is held up to, by taking the Oath of Office. Luckily for President Bill Clinton, he was tried and acquitted from lack of guilty verdicts. The lack

Martha Stewart, was born on August 3, 1941, in New Jersey. She grew up in Nutley, a working-class community near New York City. Martha went to Barnard College meanwhile she was a fashion model as a way to pay her college tuition. Just after her sophomore year, Martha met her husband, a Yale Law School student, Andy Stewart. For the modest beginning, Martha start her career as a stockbroker in Wall Street, her father-in-law’s profession. During the recession of early 1970s, Stewart left the brokerage, the family move to Westport, Connecticut, where they purchased and restored a 19th century farmhouse. This farmhouse

In all jobs there are a code of ethics to follow. Following this code an employee will not get in trouble. The same applies to everybody in life, there is certain ethics that are to be followed. Which could be such as not taking another person’s belongings or randomly screaming in a store. In each place of work, there is going to be different ethical issues.

Ethics is defined as the area of study that deals with determining what is good and bad behavior. For a company to be unethical, it would take part in actions that are not acceptable for every company to take part in. An example of some unethical behaviors in companies include but are not limited to; damage to the environment, exploiting the workforce by paying low wages, taking part in child labor, or producing products which are harmful or dangerous. Netflix acted ethically when the company poached the two Fox executives.

It seems in todays world ethics can be the difference for a company succeeding or failing. With the way social media is today any small scandal a company has can be turned to worldwide news overnight. That is why companies take so much pride in their images in todays world and make sure that they are making ethical decisions and also being socially responsible.

Today’s business world presents numerous ethical issues. In today’s world above board/moral ethics in organizations do not often materialize intuitively. Organization must strive to provide employees with a clear understanding of the overall company vision. This will aid employees in practicing the code of ethics, policies and procedures in the workplace. Companies must be unwavering in continuously delivering the uppermost ethics of provision in which customers, applicants and employees are entitled to under fair business practices. One major core value is to uphold responsible and fair business practices.

In their personal and professional lives, people can and, unfortunately, sometimes do go against their moral and ethical standards. Ethical standards are what it means to be a good person, the social rules that govern our behavior. Ethics in business is essentially the study of what constitutes the right and wrong or the good or bad behavior in the workplace environment. A business is an organization whose objective is to provide goods or services for profit. The organization has a group of people that work together to achieve a common purpose. The moral challenges that these men and women face each day along with a whole range of problems that could occur, are why ethics plays such an important