Consider Wells Fargo Ceo Stapf's Recent Retirement Case Study

During my courses, I frequently remind students that most corporate executives, accountants, and auditors are honest and ethical. This case provides a stark and powerful example of one such individual. When I discuss a case such as this in my courses, I try to provide other examples of positive role models among corporate executives. Granted, most of these examples do not involve accounting or auditing matters, but, nevertheless, they help to blunt the impression that students may receive from studying my cases that most corporate executives are “crooks.”

In the past, many corporate executive have committed various forms scandals in their organizations. Such fraudulent arts are unethical and immoral behavior. This led the US government to form legislation in order to control fraudulent activities; mostly performed by senior officers in the organization. In view of this, this paper will address the following: historical summary on SOX enactment, the key ethical components of SOX, social responsibility implications regarding mandatory publication of corporate ethics, whether the criticisms of SOX implication presents an unfair burden on smaller organizations and suggestions on the improvement of SOX legislation.

This now bankrupt company, misappropriated investments, pension funds, stock options and saving plans after deregulation and little oversight by the federal government. However, with deregulation an increasing competitive culture emerged as the CEO Jeffry Skilling motto to his organization was to “do it right, do it now, and do it better” this was the rally cried that pushed ambitious employees to engage in unethical behavior as Enron use deceptive “accounting methods to maintain its investment grade status” (Sims, & Brinkmann, 2003, pp.244-245). As Enron continued to flourish and received accolades from the business community this recognition drove executives to continue the façade of bending ethical guidelines before their public fall from

Recent years, there is an increasing rate on sexual scandals of Chief Executive Officers from business and political area. As a result, these CEOs not only lost their jobs because of bad influence from sexual harassment, but experience a higher chance of ruining company’s reputation and firm future performance. Under this circumstance, an increasing number of companies decide to add code of moral into the area of corporate governance and declare that CEOs should resigned or be fired when they related to some scandals. However, other corporations choose to not fire the CEO and at the meantime to help them hide this news from the media and the public.

According to Emily Glazer of the Wall Street Journal, Wells Fargo’s Sales Practice Scandal is a result of their corporate culture. The upper level executives could be getting nothing as their bonuses this year as the board continues to decide. This is because those men and women are responsible for the actions of those who they employ/supervise Making money has been the firm’s primary goal for many years and the higher up’s all the way down to the lower managers are responsible for creating this type of environment. According to the Wall Street Journal “One manager…in an email peppered with exclamation points and capital letters…urged her employees to ignore the bosses and get sales up at any cost, says someone who saw the email.” This is a perfect example of terrible managing. Throwing ethics and good conduct out the window just so that a few of the staff get bonuses at the year’s end is just wrong. In class, we constantly discuss the ethics involved in business and recently we’ve spent a lot of time on corporate culture. Shockingly enough, in last year’s annual report the company

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,

Looks like "Wall Street got something right for once," said Tim Mullaney at Market​Watch. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf abruptly resigned last week, forced into retirement by devastating revelations that employees secretly created some 2 million fraudulent accounts in order to meet unrealistic sales quotas. The banking giant had already fired some 5,000 workers over the scandal, but as it became clear that the malfeasance was rooted deep in Wells' corporate culture, "accountability needed to be had at the top." Finally, a banking executive is taking the fall for his company's misdeeds, said Helaine Olen in Slate. Why is this time different? JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, for instance, still has his job despite the fact that lax oversight allowed

It’s not very uncommon to see headlines of money hunger CEO’s or even a small group of decision making conducting unethical behaviors in their best interests. Generally, those conducting the unethical behaviors have the opportunity to gain from their actions. In the Wells Fargo scandal, this is not the case. This scandal was not acted out at the top, but yet through the front line employees. This scandal was also unusual due to the amount of

We have seen for a couple of years that Wells Fargo goes under a lot of pressure and unrealistic sales target to built on selling as many products to customers as possible and to where we see employees committing fraud. “Former employees of Wells Fargo said that is what they face on the job,” (Matt Egan). And now the bank is struggling to rebuild trust in an industry already fighting banker reputation. Wells Fargo found 2 million fake accounts were opened by bank workers without customer’s authorization and secretly 5,300 hundred employees were fired, Wells Fargo finds $185 millions of dollars. Wells Fargo is taking stronger steps to address the scandal”, (Matt Egan).

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

It is only during moral lapses and corporate scandals that interest groups and the broader public ask themselves the fundamental ethical questions, who are the managers of the organization and were they acting with the ethical guidelines. For a long time, the issue of ethics was largely ignored, with organizations focusing on profit maximization. However, this has changed, and much attention is now focused on ethics management by researchers and leaders. The issue of ethics has arisen at a time when public trust on corporate governance is low, and the legitimacy of leadership is being questioned. Leaders are expected to be the source of moral development and ethical guidance to their employees.

With Enron, the responsibility and blame started with Enron’s executives, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow. Their goal was to make Enron into the world’s greatest company. To make this goal a reality, they created a company culture that encouraged “rule breaking” and went so far as to “discourage employees from reporting and investigating ethical lapses and questionable business dealings” (Knapp, 2010, p. 14). They insisted the employees use aggressive and illegal

Knowledge is leaving the firm at an alarming pace. Retirements are stripping the firm of corporate experience, and projects are repeating mistakes that have been avoided in the past. Average time to complete carrier maintenance is 3 months longer than average. Traditional methods of training and transferring knowledge have not yielded tangible benefits. To reverse this trend, the Carrier Maintenance Leadership Team should establish and resource Knowledge Sharing Networks (KSN) centered on key business practices. These KSNs will ensure best practices are applied and institutionalized. These newly formed groups will also transfer tacit knowledge and strengthen relationships among the activities that work on our Carriers.

Business Industry has witnessed the outcomes of bad moral decisions taken by business leaders. Enron’s story is only one example of corporate scandals and cases of bad moral decisions, which has not only shaken the public trust in corporations, but also affected the bank accounts of investors and employees. Before the bankruptcy of Enron; it was included in one of the fortune 500 companies after its fraudulent accounting case the share went down to $1 (Enron scandal, 2010; PBS, 2002; Godwin, 2006; Godwin, 2008).

It seems like business morals and ethics are being whisked to the side in lieu of the ever growing demand of higher stock prices, rising budget goals and investor profits. Despite the increased regulation of corporations through legislation, such as, Sarbanes-Oxley, some corporations still find themselves struggling to maintain ethics and codes of conduct within the workplace. In reviewing the failings of the Enron Scandal, one can heed the mistakes that both individual and organization malaise, such as, conflicts of interest, lack of true transparency and the sever lack of moral courage from the government, executive board, senior management and others, contributed to the energy giant’s downfall.