Hello Kenneth, I feel that you are on the right path to getting an idea of the conflict that may be represented in the articel. Reading the Beaudoin article and making reference to the Bernie Madoff, does show the ethical issues involved. In addition to low morals, there are other policies that have been broken and a loss of control when it comes to transparency. Elizabeth
Chapter 5 of They Say I Say is a very interesting chapter because it talks about improving your writing. In the chapter, they talk about learning how to state your own opinion without sounding biased. I believe that one great example of this is when the author exclaims, “I have a problem with what liberals call cultural differences.” This type of writing is important because you can express your own views and opinions without sounding biased. This type of writing only works if you can integrate parts of their argument into your own. Another method discussed in this text was using references to things you said prior to that. One good example of this could be when it states that,“ We would argue that voice markers we identified earlier, are extremely
Based on the information presented in the PBS documentary and the TIME article, describe how the behaviors of corporations, such as Ford, Firestone, and the financial institutions on Wall Street, could or should be understood as crime whether or not they have been prosecuted? How do these activities differ from those involved in “typical” street crimes?
He talks about how the Standard Oil company offered the same quality of oil for lower prices than he could do. Other situations like this was the Credit Mobilier scandal were railroad companies got paid a lot of money but built little railways with the money keeping the rest.
The act identifies and assigns accountability to those who knowingly falsify documents and it clearly states the consequences for acting outside the defined standard, relating to corporate governance. Using case studies we will review how the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is helping to standardized a code of conduct and how it has increased the awareness of corporate responsibility. First, we will review the definitions of corporate governance, business ethics and corporate responsibility. Next, we will examine the effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, through a case study and identify possible challenges the Sarbanes-Oxley Act may face, as public demand for social responsibility increases. Finally, we will review proactive recommendations for provisions to key titles of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. These provisions will accommodate the growing public demand for ethical and social responsibility.
Ethics, ethical values, and social responsibility should all work in unison in a corporate business structure. These key traits are better defined as maintaining overall good business morals, obtaining employees who possess personal ethical values, and finally to behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic and environmental issues. For a business to better ensure these quality business traits a code of ethics should be adopted by the business. In the cases of Bernie Madoff and Enron, the most well-known financial scandals in history, I feel, gave a major hand in pushing business all across America to have and enforce the code of ethics.
Many college students find themselves struggling, while trying to write papers in their English classes. This book was written to help you though these struggles. They say/I say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein is a book that was designed to help students be better writers. I think that this book is absolutely a huge help to anyone in need of becoming a much more confident and better writer. This book has helped me learn how to write more structured sentences and how to form them in ways that sound better and are also more grammatically correct than before. I have learned how to properly demonstrate and use many writing techniques such as making quotations, playing the believing game, how to write strong summaries, how to plant a “naysayer”, and incorporate “so what?” and “who cares?” into my writing. This book can be extremely helpful to anyone in need of assistance or for people interested in
To combat this assumption it turns out large amounts of money of the value of $300million was invested in Bernard Madoff accounts in the form of pension funds. Some officials knew that the unscathed performance of Madoff securities were too good to be true as their prices consistently climbed up in spite the financial crisis. However, still they pawned its own shareholders’ funds with the hopes of jumping on the same band wagon as Madoff and reaping further profits. Another angle at probing the case was that the CEO, directors as well as executives were only looking out for themselves. Evidently they had direct benefits in the form of handsome compensation packages for retaining high profile clients such as Madoff and Wise which
The problems to be investigated are the business ethics and practices of Goldman Sachs. There were several grey areas in which Goldman Sachs operated their business.
This paper provides an in-depth evaluation of Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which is said to be promoted to produce change in the corporate environment, in general, by stressing issues of public accountability and disclosure in the financial operations of business. It explains how this is an Act that represents the government's and the Security and Exchange Commission's concern in promoting ethical standards in terms of financial disclosure in the corporate environment.
As with much of Enron, their outward appearance did not match what was really going on inside the company. Enron ended up cultivating their own demise for bankruptcy by how they ran their company. This corrupt corporate culture was a place whose employees threw ethical responsibility to the wind if it meant financial gain. At Enron, the employees were motivated by a very “cut-throat” culture. If an employee didn’t perform well enough, they would simply be replaced by someone who could. “The company’s culture had profound effects on the ethics of its employees” (Sims, pg.243). Like a parent to their children, when the executives of a company pursue unethical financial means, it sets a certain tone for their employees and even the market of the company. As mentioned before, Enron had a very “cut-throat” attitude in regards to their employees. This also became one Enron’s main ethical falling points. According to the class text, “employees were rated every six months, with those ranked in the bottom 20 percent forced to leave” (Ferrell, 2017, pg. 287). This system which pits employees against each other rather than having them work together will create a workplace of dishonesty and a recipe of disaster for the company. This coupled with the objective of financial growth, creates a very dim opportunity for any ethical culture. “The entire cultural framework of Enron not only allowed unethical behavior to flourish,
Question 1 Summarize 1 one page how you would explain Enron’s ethical meltdown: Enron was an energy company founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 through a merger of vast networks of natural gas lines. Enron specialized in wholesale, natural gas, and electricity, and made its money as a wholesaler between suppliers and customers rather than actually owning any. Enron in fact didn’t own any assets, which made their accounting procedures very unusual. The lack of accounting transparency at Enron allowed the company’s managers to make Enron’s financial performance better than it actually was. The organizational culture at Enron was to blame for it’s ethical meltdown. Enron’s accounting scheme slowly began to erode its ethical practices, which soon led the culture of Enron to become a more aggressive and misleading business practice. Enron reported profits from joint partnerships that were not yet attained in order to keep stock prices up (or make wall street happy). As this was happening employees began to notice the ethics in senior management (leadership) deteriorating, and soon after they to would follow in their footsteps. Senior management thought they were saving their company from financial ruin and though lying was ok if it meant saving the company. Investors would surely sell their stocks if they really knew the situation the
The second ethical problem in this case relates to the Rigas family’s use of publicly-held corporate funds as a personal “piggy bank.” The Rigases used the company jet for personal reasons “without approval of the Board of Directors”, on one occasion flying to Africa for a safari (Markon & Frank, 2002). On another, one of John Rigas’ sons used a corporate jet to pick up an actress friend of his (Grant, Young, & Nuzum, 2004). The former CFO claimed that Adelphia’s funds were used by one of Rigas’ sons to buy a condominium, and to build a $13M golf course (Grant, Young, & Nuzum,
a. There are many moral issues, but the story seems to revolve around several cases of ‘passing the buck’, or rationalizing how small of a part each respective individual plays in the conspiracy. In most of these cases, like Gretzinger’s scuffle with Line, the individual is charged with risking his job for potentially little or no change. Each instance seems to have stemmed from the inability of anyone to challenge the hot-headed Warren and his faulty design. As the conspiracy developed further, to speak out about the conspiracy would mean a less believable narrative. This
.Some indispensable issues that have been gone up against are conflicts of interest, financial integrity, corruption and bribery, consumer privacy, and ethical advertising. In the event that the administration authorized more grounded approaches to keep organizations in agreeability, then outrages like Enron would not happen.. Consider those delegates impacted by losing all their retirement that they trusted into putting in their association
How do these corporations cheat the system? How could these corporations get away with this? Both questions instantly came to mind after viewing and hearing this discouraging and nearly depressing fact. America is being cheated and blind-sided by the actions of these selfish and arrogant firms. American citizens are being undermined by such actions. In the video; Henry Paulson says “institutions that sell shares to their government will benefit and accept an executive compensation.” This statement immediately struck me to be false, as the unemployment rate in America has done nothing but rise over recent time. Over twelve million citizens of America are unemployed and struggling with everyday life right now. America and its tax paying citizens are in desperate need of a new plan and direction towards solving their ever-growing unemployment rate and financial crisis. The government must take responsibility in leading a movement towards a plan, or even structure new laws that prevent corruption like this from happening. An in depth investigation throughout the financial industry, to prevent and enable such distortions from occurring; would greatly benefit America’s present economy.