Ethical corporate behavior has been a recurring issue of public policy. Recent events have brought this issue into sharp focus beginning with the Enron scandal in 2001 and more recently the financial crisis of 2008. Subsequent regulation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley act seem to be in reaction to the public clamoring for government action in the wake of painful economic outcomes. A deeper examination of the events leading up to Enron and the financial crisis both seem to indicate that government agencies were asleep at the switch. Policy such as Sarbanes-Oxley in the wake of Enron have not prevented the more recent financial crisis of 2008. Government social policy has not promoted corporate ethical responsibility but rather mandated poor business practice. Responsible social policy, effective government oversight, and strict corporate liability for misconduct will ensure economic stability into the future.
Business ethics, it its broadest sense, is a “consensus of what constitutes right or wrong behavior in the world of business and application of moral principles to situations that arise in a business setting.” (Cross & Miller, 2012, p. G-4). Corporations by their very nature have a direct responsibility to shareholders who are collectively the owners of the corporation. Although shareholders have the ability to direct corporate policy through participation in shareholder meetings and putting shareholder proposals to vote, commonly reffered to as corporate governance, few shareholders have a direct view of every day workings inside a large company like Enron. Responsibility lies with the board of directors and their executives to exercise duty of care, duty of loyalty and disclose and conflicts of interest which may arise (Cross ...
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...est illustrated with an old Chinese saying; Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
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Ethics policies are implemented in almost all businesses. Companies search for candidates that will be moral in their actions so they can ensure long-term financial success. Throughout history we have seen businesses fall due to unethical behavior. In recent years the business Enron Corporation is best known for the scandal that led to the bankruptcy of a company with more than 60 billion dollars in assets. We will examine the circumstances that led to the downfall of Enron, how the scandal was realized, as well as the outcome of one of the largest bankruptcies in American history; a case that exemplifies unethical professional behavior.
In 2008, the U.S economy went through the “Great Recession,” possibly as a result of inappropriate and ineffective regulation in the banking system, causing Lehman Brothers to file for bankruptcy. There was a large debt and housing bubble which resulted in plummeting real estate prices and financial securities. Peter D. Schiff’s “How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes” uses comic illustrations and a simple storyline to teach readers about how the 2008 recession came about and how the U.S tried to relieve it using the ideas of credit, savings, and other economic concepts.
Enron was the model for rapid growth in the 1990’s but part of the culture and ethics of Enron was disturbing. Falsified documents, cutthroat competitiveness among employees and accounting schemes that hid the truth of the company’s indebtedness were just a few examples of the lack of business ethics within the organization. Perhaps a more virtuous management team could have saved Enron from collapse.
Many organizations have been destroyed or heavily damaged financially and took a hit in terms of reputation, for example, Enron. The word Ethics is derived from a Greek word called Ethos, meaning “The character or values particular to a specific person, people, culture or movement” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2007, p. 295). Ethics has always played and will continue to play a huge role within the corporate world. Ethics is one of the important topics that are debated at lengths without reaching a conclusion, since there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s basically depends on how each individual perceives a particular situation. Over the past few years we have seen very poor unethical business practices by companies like Enron, which has affected many stakeholders. Poor unethical practices affect the society in many ways; employees lose their job, investors lose their money, and the country’s economy gets affected. This leads to people start losing confidence in the economy and the organizations that are being run by the so-called “educated” top executives that had one goal in their minds, personal gain. When Enron entered the scene in the mid-1980s, it was little more than a stodgy energy distribution system. Ten years later, it was a multi-billion dollar corporation, considered the poster child of the “new economy” for its willingness to use technology and the Internet in managing energy. Fifteen years later, the company is filing for bankruptcy on the heels of a massive financial collapse, likely the largest in corporate America’s history. As this paper is being written, the scope of Enron collapse is still being researched, poked and prodded. It will take years to determine what, exactly; the impact of the demise of this energy giant will be both on the industry and the
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After news of the scandal of Enron, one of the hottest items on e-Bay was a 64-page copy of Enron’s corporate code of ethics. One seller/former employee proclaimed it had “never been opened.” In the forward Kenneth L. Lay, CEO of Enron stated, “We want to be proud of Enron and to know that it enjoys a reputation for fairness and honesty and that it is respected (Enron 2).” For a company with such an extensive code of ethics and a CEO who seemed to want the company to be respected for that, there are still so many unanswered questions of what exactly went wrong. I believe that simply having a solid and thorough code of ethics alone does not prevent a company from acting unethically when given the right opportunity.
The "subprime crises" was one of the most significant financial events since the Great Depression and definitely left a mark upon the country as we remain upon a steady path towards recovering fully. The financial crisis of 2008, became a defining moment within the infrastructure of the US financial system and its need for restructuring. One of the main moments that alerted the global economy of our declining state was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and after this the economy began spreading as companies and individuals were struggling to find a way around this crisis. (Murphy, 2008) The US banking sector was first hit with a crisis amongst liquidity and declining world stock markets as well. The subprime mortgage crisis was characterized by a decrease within the housing market due to excessive individuals and corporate debt along with risky lending and borrowing practices. Over time, the market apparently began displaying more weaknesses as the global financial system was being affected. With this being said, this brings into question about who is actually to assume blame for this financial fiasco. It is extremely hard to just assign blame to one individual party as there were many different factors at work here. This paper will analyze how the stakeholders created a financial disaster and did nothing to prevent it as the credit rating agencies created an amount of turmoil due to their unethical decisions and costly mistakes.
The term “ethical business” is seen, by many people, as an oxymoron. This is because a business’s main objective is to make as much money as possible. Making the most money possible, however, can often lead to unethical actions. Companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Satyam have been the posterchildren for how corporations’ greed lead to unethical practices. In recent times however, companies have been accused of being unethical based on, not how they manage their finances, but on how they treat the society that they operate in. People have started to realize that the damage companies have been doing to the world around them is more impactful and far worse than any financial fraud that these companies might be engaging in. Events like the BP oil
Enron Corporation was based in Houston, Texas and participated in the wholesale exchange of American energy and commodities (ex. electricity and natural gas). Enron found itself in the middle of a very public accounting fraud scandal in the early 2000s. The corruption of Enron’s CFO and top executives bring to question their ethics and ethical culture of the company. Additionally, examining Enron ethics, their organization culture, will help to determine how their criminal acts could have been prevented.
Shortly after the financial crisis in 2008, many economists had to rethink their approach to the market. Everyone knew we had a panic because the stock market and the housing market collapsed. American economy was reaching to the bottom. Many people considered it as a second worst recession after the great the Great Depression. But what was the cause? Who were responsible for the crisis? What can we learn from this turmoil? In the recent New York Times Sunday magazine article, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman offered his explanation for the causes and insight toward fixing the economy.
This paper discusses the role of ethics in corporate governance. I seek to show the application of moral and ethical principles in corporate governance. Ethics is a topic that has generated a lot of interest in the last decade especially after high profile scandals. The failures of prominent companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Merrill lynch and Martha Stewart portrays the lack of corporate ethics. The failure of such business has seen an increased pressure to incorporate ethics in corporate governance. The result of corporate scandals has been eroding investor and public confidence. The entire economic system has experienced some form of stress from loss of capital, a falling stock market and business failures.
When an ethical dilemma arises within an organization, it is difficult to separate right and wrong with what is best for the majority. Sometimes the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no.” In 2002, Enron Corporation shows us just that. By 2002, the sixth-largest corporation in America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The case of the Enron scandal is one of the best examples of corporate greed and fraud in America.
Business Ethics are much more than the buzz word stories on late night news. The Corporate Social Responsibility of a company goes well beyond that. “Business Ethics are moral guidelines for the conduct of business based on notions of what is right, wrong and fair.” (Bellow, 2012). Individual backgrounds play a huge role in person by person code of conduct can vary from employee to employer. To help solve some grey areas in what is ethically correct, companies now make a code of conduct that is over everyone in the company. This code of responsibility helps employees have better understanding of what is required of each and every one of them. “Corporate Social Responsibility is a business philosophy which stresses the need for