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Corruption in workplaces
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Tyco’s Money Hungry Executives The business Tyco was first established in 1960; four years later the company went public and became primarily a manufacturer of products for commercial use. Since then Tyco has grown rapidly with a presence in over 100 countries and over 250,000 employees. During the dates of 1991 to 2001 when Dennis Kozlowski was the CEO of Tyco, the annual sales grew tremendously from $3 billion in annual sales to $36 billion. However, later in 2002 Tyco faced issues with stockholders being extremely cautions after the bankruptcy of Enron, Kozlowski attempted to reassure the public that their accounting was correct. As time passed we learned that Dennis Kozlowski was not being truthful with this statement.
The Fall Of Tyco’s Stock Prices
All was well for Tyco throughout the late 90’s and early 2000’s, but that all came to abrupt change when Tyco saw a 20 percent decrease in stock prices during the middle of January of
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The first and most important thing I learned was to look at how my behavior may affect the people around me. If your actions do not benefit the business and your co works then they are probably not ethical. I also learned to only accept what you have earned. My Kozlowski had not earned the money to buy all the fancy things he had bought in this case; he used money that he took away from the business as well as the stockholders. In conclusion, this case described a company that started out very strong, but as soon as they seen a decline in stock prices they fell apart. When the stock prices fell the CEO, Kozlowski started making poor choices, such as falsifying financial information and stealing from the business. From my observation, companies that give out large bonuses for reached goals find themselves fighting with executives that put their morals aside for
My conclusion is that the protagonist should buy more stock of Costco Wholesale Corporation as she concluded the company is growing at manageable rate without relying on debt or equity. They are with high sales or profit, low labor costs, and consistent growth. Costco seems to be a low risk stock that is performing well with long term stability for more
In this letter, the top officials are very optimistic about the year 2010, having been disappointed by the past two years. Though the year 2010 was characterized by fragile economic conditions in most of their markets, the year produced a record in terms of sales and earnings. This record sale is seen by Costco’s achievement of $7.63 billion sales in 2010 up from $69.9 billion sales in 2009, a net earning of $1.3 billion, and an eighteen percent increase in earning per share.
The CEO Dick Kovacevich became the head of the company in 1998 after its merger with Norwest Corp. ?Business Week? classifies him as one of the best managers: ?While many of his peers have been embroiled in one scandal or another, Wells Fargo & Co. CEO Richard M. Kovacevich, 59, has kept his bank safely out of the fray? (BW). Kovacevich obtained his MBA from Stanford after an injury in his shoulder kept him from becoming a pitcher for the New Yorker Yankees. Nevertheless, Kovacevich transports his athletic attitude to his business ?pitching hard and fast? in his industry (RMA Journal). For him, mistakes are unavoidable part of business but he treats them as opportunities to learn and grow. His core strategy is to sell as many products as possible to each customer. Currently, four products are sold on average to each customer, which is double the industry average. Furthermore, Kovacevich admits to his willingness to sacrifice a little profit margin for the purpose of building lasting and trusting relationships with their customers. Kovacevich has also invested in building better relationships between the management and the workers because for him having the right people on the team is crucial. He acknowledges the need for decentralization in such a big company, for the purpose of which the right people have to be picked and allowed to run the segment as if they own it. Ever since becoming a CEO, he has made worker satisfaction a top goal for Wells Fargo. He has also introduced incentives for his ?people goals? expressed in the generous bonuses (ranging from 10 ...
Taking the Vermont Teddy Bear Company private was a bold but in the short-term positive move for the company by CEO Elisabeth Robert. Going private will allow the company to focus on execution instead of short-term strategies to pacify Wall Street. Instead of wasting valuable executive time and effort on quarterly financial calls the Vermont Teddy Bear Company is free to follow its long-term plan and execute without the Wall Street push for short term gains. The company wanted to invest in its own infrastructure expansion and improvement but as a public company this would have incurred the wrath of Wall Street. "We were hoping to get [Vermont Teddy Bear] out of the tyranny of quarterly earnings," says founder Chris Covington (Sheahan, 2005). Additionally, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was set to put tremendous pressure on the company. From both a manpower and financial resource perspective, this Congress enacted law was going to be more than the company could bear (no pun intended). "The prospect of having to enact section 404 [regulations] was onerous on a company like ourselves," says CEO Elisabeth Robert (Sheahan,2006). The sale closed in September of 2005
Trevino, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2011). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. New York: John Wiley.
An integrative model for understanding and managing ethical behavior in business organizations. Journal of Business Ethics, 9(3), 233-242. Doi: 10.1007/BF00382649
Being ethical or not? Always doing the right thing? These are all questions and thoughts, which arise in a business on a daily basis. However, I personally feel that the answer lies within us. If we choose when to be ethical, and when not to be, does it actually make us a good person? Albert Carr discusses some of key aspects of his theory in the article “If Business Bluffing
The three main crooks Chairman Ken Lay, CEO Jeff Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow, are as off the rack as they come. Fastow was skimming from Enron by ripping off the con artists who showed him how to steal, by hiding Enron debt in dummy corporations, and getting rich off of it. Opportunity theory is ever present because since this scam was done once without penalty, it was done plenty of more times with ease. Skilling however, was the typical amoral nerd, with delusions of grandeur, who wanted to mess around with others because he was ridiculed as a kid, implementing an absurd rank and yank policy that led to employees grading each other, with the lowest graded people being fired. Structural humiliation played a direct role in shaping Skilling's thoughts and future actions. This did not mean the worst employees were fired, only the least popular, or those who were not afraid to tell the truth. Thus, the corrupt culture of Enron was born. At one point, in an inter...
Solomon says that “business ethics is nothing less than the full awareness of what one is doing, its consequences and complications” (Shaw 39). I would have to say that I agree with this statement. Someone has to know that what they are doing is either “right” or “wrong” and they must be willing to take responsibility for the outcomes of their actions.
George R. Boggs, in the Handbook of CEO-Board Relationships and Responsibilities, warns that “a CEO’s termination can result in, at the least, negative publicity, and at the worst, litigation” (p. 40). The events that occurred at JCC; financial irresponsibility, reports of lack of oversight and accountability; political interference, followed by the actions taken by the board; the suspension and firing of the president and the termination of 21 others, provides a picture of an institution whose morale is nonexistent.
I discovered how sticking to one’s morals should be the topmost priority for everyone involved in business, whether personal or professional. Regardless of what the consequences may be, the intensity of the problem, and the complexities it may bring, sacrificing one’s integrity should never be an option, as integrity goes hand-in-hand with the morals of an individual (Duggan & Woodhouse, 2011). They further go on to say that having individuals take part in building a code of ethics that supports employee integrity, they will act ethically. Also, I believe that companies should place more emphasis on the moral behavior of their employees, and clear-cut policies should be set regarding such ethical situations. Furthermore, I realized how serving justice while making decisions really helps in the long run, and that opting to go for the ideal rather than they deserved is not always the best option, and could hurt a company in more than one
Tyco International was founded in 1960 and was regarded as an important electrical and electronic components provider, fire protection system maker and electronic security service provider. It is a diverse producing and serving corporation. Tyco has done business in over 1000 locations in 50 countries and hires 69,000 employees around the world (TYCO, 2012). Tyco International has expanded rapidly and broadly since its IPO in 1973 and has numerous companies among the Fortune 500. The firm’s revenue increased from $3.1 billion in 1992 to over $40 billion in 2004, with the firm’s market value estimated at over $100 billion (TYCO, 2012). Tyco has made numerous acquisitions, including 40 acquisitions since the 1980s.
Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2007). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right Fourth ed., Retrieved on July 30, 2010 from www.ecampus.phoenix.edu
As a student interested in one day starting a firm, learning the business models and its advantage is prepping me for the real world. Those models like the SWOT Analysis are bringing me closer to my dream of running my own business. Professor Sheldon’s experience in the business atmosphere has opened my mind to the experience of running an enterprise. This has helped me slowly develop my plans on what nature of business I want to enter and the stakeholders I’m obligated too. Apart from obligation I am also subjected to the laws of the land and a social responsibility. I must consider ethical behaviour in doing business as a lack of it has negative effects. Look at Enron for example, where the firm lied to their stakeholders just to keep stock prices up and later crashed the company. This resulted in many investors losing their pension and savings and now the board is serving long jail
The course also taught me ways that businesses can control or prevent unethical behavior. A company should have an ethics officer, a hotline, a codes of conduct, an ethics program, good communication about ethics from top management, and ethical role models, to name a few. It taught me that most people will behave unethically if that behavior is rewarded and if performance relied on employees behaving