Wall Street: Greed In The Workplace

Jason Terwiliger, a new member of the finance committee at the Windshore Country Club, recently found some problems with the financing of the F&B outlets. His upscale restaurant in the city is extremely successful, and he hopes to bring some helpful ideas to the Windshore Country Club’s F&B operations on the outskirts of the city. One main concern Jason has is all of the differences in the 4 F&B outlets and that they all come out of the same kitchen. He says that the club’s food cost is at 42% while his restaurant is at 28%, which is a huge difference. Steve should respond to this concern by telling Jason that although his restaurant only has one outlet for his kitchen, most clubs have many outlets only run from one kitchen, and while he can’t change that directly, hopefully other solutions will

“Serving in Florida”, is a narrative essay written by Barbara Ehrenreich.. In this essay, Ehrenreich describes what it is like to work and live in a low-class society in Florida, and live off of minimum wage. Throughout the essay she focused on describing her personal experiences as a waitress at the Hearthside restaurant. Ehrenreich used amazing imagery while describing the working and living conditions of low-class people. She went on to tell how the employees are forced to work in ridiculous conditions. They were often forced to work long hours, with no breaks, and were occasionally refused of food. Ehrenreich went on to describe how oftentimes, the managers of these establishments, would take advantage of the employee’s situations. The

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?

Enron’s ride is quite a phenomenon: from a regional gas pipeline trader to the largest energy trader in the world, and then back down the hill into bankruptcy and disgrace. As a matter of fact, it took Enron 16 years to go from about $10 billion of assets to $65 billion of assets, and 24 days to go bankruptcy. Enron is also one of the most celebrated business ethics cases in the century. There are so many things that went wrong within the organization, from all personal (prescriptive and psychological approaches), managerial (group norms, reward system, etc.), and organizational (world-class culture) perspectives. This paper will focus on the business ethics issues at Enron that were raised from the documentation Enron: The Smartest Guys

In warning about the evils of greed, Jesus used a parable: “There was a rich man blessed with [fertile land.] He thought to himself, ‘What will I do? I have no place to keep all my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘I know what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger barns! I will put all my good things together in my new barns. Then I can say…Rest, eat, drink, and enjoy life!’“But God said to that man, ‘Foolish man! Tonight you will die!... Who will get [your things] now?’ This is how it will be for anyone who saves things only for himself. To God that person is not rich.” (Luke 12:13 21)

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

The problem to be investigated is the application of business ethics. In the business world, ethics are extremely important. Ethics are prime elements that help a business to grow and to become more productive. It is by applying proper business ethics that a business can operate in a moral or ethical business environment and managed to conduct all activities in a manner that maximizes profits while not compromising all other non-economic concerns(Schwab, 1996). Businesses have over the years failed to nurture business ethics in order to fulfill shareholders' interests and to have a culture that is oriented towards profit maximization and high performance(Jennings, 2012; Sims & Felton, 2006). This has led business to have gray areas in their activities. Gray areas are those situations or problems that do not fit exactly into any ethical analysis. These are the activities which may be represented to be immoral as a result of lying and false representations on the part of the business.

Enron’s use of informal or social control as a means of guiding employee actions contributed to its illegal actions forwarded by a pervasively negative culture and led to the ultimate downfall of the firm. In order to examine how Enron made a greater use of social control than formal control, this paper will first propose frameworks that describe what social control are formal control are. Then, it will use key details from the documentary to show how Enron’s culture fit the a framework of social control that generated its actions. Finally, the paper will discuss how formal controls were in place but, display how these formal controls were minimized and not the primary catalysts through a discussion of espoused values. These arguments will then show how Enron’s greater use of social control to direct the actions of its employees led to the bankruptcy of the company and loss of the employees’ pension and life savings.

As said in every economics class, the reason every business goes into business is to make money. The same can be said in criminal cases involving businesses. In the majority of cases, executives and people highly ranked in the company tend to bend the numbers in the financial/accounting areas of the business or corporation. They do not do this for fun, but rather to make money. Something needs to be done before corporations really get out of hand.

According to Johnson (2012) leaders are powerful role models, and policies will have a little effect if leaders do not follow the rules they set. In Enron case, corruption and ethical misconduct were deeply embedded in their business culture where profitability was more important than ethics. In this paper, I will address the factors that had led to the development of the culture of profit before principle at Enron. Also, I will create my personal code of ethics that will guide me in my professional and personal decision making and doing the right thing when faced with ethical challenges.

In today’s society crime occurs everyday across all aspects of life. One particular crime is that of white collar and corporate level crime. It is important that we as a society study this type of crime in depth because many individuals believe that white collar and corporate level crimes are victimless crimes when in reality they have the potential to destroy major corporations and economies all with one single case. The news or media rarely talk about this type of crime because it is often difficult to understand and individuals typically lack interest in these types of cases. One particular case is that of Jordan Belfort. Dubbed the infamous “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort is a former stockbroker who robbed investors of over $200 million dollars to create his wealth through “pump and dump” schemes, insider trading, money laundering securities fraud, and stock-market manipulation. As an attempt to further understand these complex cases I will break down Belfort’s case as far as the methods and means as to how he got started, his use of “pump and dump” schemes and other means as to how he acquired his wealth. In addition to this I will discuss the sanctions and disciplinary action that Jordan Belfort was given, how the case affected society and what new regulations were

The thing I liked most about this documentary was the fact that it focused on the guys at the top, the self-proclaimed "smartest men in the room", the so-called geniuses who knew the energy business so much better than the rest of the industry. And what a piece of work these men were.

Greg Whalley, (former Enron President and Chief Operation Officer) had six to eight conversations last fall with the Treasury’s Department Peter Fisher, including one in which he asked Fisher to call Enron’s lenders as they decided whether to extend credit to the company.

The owner of Indian Fusion, a restaurant in Canada is a pretty generous person. This hotel has put on a sign on their backdoor inviting anybody who is hungry and in need for food to come over and eat. The board says, ‘’ If you are hungry and have no money to pay, just ring the bell below or come in for a free meal box/coffee anytime. The owner has a big heart but the other reason he is doing this is because the hotel wants to do something with the excess food. The owner told CTV news that ‘I thought, how many people can I go and ask: “Are you hungry?” It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘So I thought, why not put up a sign?’

People who work on Wall Street are considering elites of the society, their works relate to finance and deal with the world economy. Many students desire for working on Wall Street; however, this dream is hard to accomplish because this job is for people who are considered “smart”. In Biographies of Hegemony, the author Karen Ho brings up the idea of smartness, which addresses to people not only have individual intelligence, but also have the quality of being an expert and has self-confidence, aggressive, and hard-working. Basically, in the article, Ho talks about students graduate from Harvard or Princeton and now they are working on Wall Street. Ho believes smartness is a form of impressiveness because smartness is not just about intelligence, but also a way to separate away from normal people. However, in Project Classroom Makeover, the author Cathy Davidson pays more attention to students who may not be the expertise, but they will use collective learning to share different opinions. Collective learning brings out the idea of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is a group of people share ideas and solve problems, which is one way of collective learning. The theory of smartness shares commons and differences with collective learning. For common, both smartness and collective learning require students to work together and have the confidence to conquer the difficulties, which lead students to the future success. For differences, smartness is associated with students who have an