Wells Fargo Ethics Analysis

From big financial and ethical scandals like Enron to WorldCom, Wells Fargo may be the next big financial and ethical scandal. Wells Fargo used to be one of the leading banks and credit lending companies in America. Now, they’re on a slippery slope downhill to one of the worst—and most unethical—banking and credit lending companies in America, maybe even in the world. Wells Fargo has been in an ethical uproar, has questionable ethical values, and questionable principles and practices in culture due to their downhill ethical standards. The company also may have been influenced by bad stakeholder judgment, and are now struggling to maintain the company’s culture. To give a description of business ethics as described by John Fraedrich, “business

In Wells Fargo “Vision and Values Guide Our Actions” each section has an “our standard” (2017, March) portion to help employees understand the expectations Wells Fargo has for them in their employment pertaining to ethical standards and the laws they have to follow. As stated in the Vision and Values Guide Our Actions handbook from Wells Fargo, the company states, “In order to maintain our reputation as a trusted ethical company, we must do our part to ensure that our values come alive through our actions” (2017, March). In this guide, the company has laid out blatantly how to respond and act ethically as a Wells Fargo employee, but this did not stop the company from performing illegal acts and starting the credit card and bank

There are even challenges of sustaining employee morale and culture in a business. Culture begins with the CEO, and executives, and is passed down through training and mentoring to managers and entry level employees. Wells Fargo’s culture seems to have been maintained for the most part, but in the context of pressure and competition it changed drastically. The fact that employees felt the need to participate due to pressure and fear that if they called the ethics hotline they would be fired, speaks volumes about how important gaining more customers meant to executives pushing the competition. According to Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases cultural relativism is “the concept that morality varies from one culture to another and that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are defined differently” (John Fraedrich, L. F., 2017). In the case of Wells Fargo, their wires are crossed in their ideals of right and wrong. Most decisions are not black and white in cultures—there are always grey areas. Pertaining to cultural realativism, “by defending the payment of bribes or ‘greasing the wheels’ of business and other questionable practices in this fashion” Wells Fargo has gone above and beyond with their cultural