Ray Anderson’s speech that he presented at an Emerging Issues Forum is included in The Corporation. However, before his speech is presented within the documentary, Ray Anderson is shown admitting in several clips throughout the film that he is guilty of being a plunderer of the earth. Within his speech, he proposes principles that corporations should follow that are in alignment with his plunderer revelation. His proposed principles are for corporations to be committed to having a purpose. He believes that the purpose should be for their corporations to do no harm. He speaks on severing the umbilical cord to earth through taking already extracted raw materials and using them over and over again. Lastly, he wants to climb the mountain of sustainability, while leaving zero foot point. Corporations are doing harm to society by having zero concern for the public. The documentary calls corporations, “monsters” that do nothing but devour as much profit as possible at the expense of anyone. Ray Anderson came to this realization and wanted to do something about it. Joan Tronto’s four ethical elements of care support Ray Anderson’s efforts and shed light on how corporations can be restructured to meet Anderson’s proposed principles. Her four ethical elements of care include, attentiveness, choosing to suspend ones own goals, ambitions, and plans in order to recognize and respond to the needs of others. Responsibility, looking beyond obligations in order to see what can directly or
The typical business man involved in corporate America works anywhere from six to ten hours per day. Phil, “the Company Man” worked six days a week sometimes until eight or nine at night, making himself a true workaholic. Using his life story before he died Goodman is able to convey her liking toward Phil but her dislike of what the business world has turned him into. Not only does Goodman use a number of rhetorical devices but she also uses Phil’s past as well as the people who were once in Phil’s life to get her message across to her reader. Ellen Goodman sarcastically creates the obituary of a man who dedicated his life to his job and the company he worked for. Goodman uses anaphora, satire, diction,
Dyck and Neubert (2012) defined ethics as "[A] set of principles or moral standards that differentiate right from wrong". It is a way of determining the morality of any action. It is important that managers adhere to ethical principles that will guide them in making appropriate and ethical decisions for the company. Thus, Roger Berg, being Vice-President of Planning at The Lake Corporation plays a significant role in the company in ensuring that decisions are made without tarnishing management ethics. He must face and weather through the challenges caused by other sources that could put him in ethical dilemma situations and push him to render management decisions violating ethics.
In situations like the case of Leon Greenblatt, Andrew Jahelka and Richard Nichols, courts can sometimes ignore the limited liability status of a corporation or LLC and hold its officers, directors, and shareholders or members personally liable for what they owe to other people or companies. The court calls this piercing the corporate veil. The LL Company is supposed follow all legal procedures that a company should. In this case Loop cooperation looks like it gave full authority to Greenblatt. The company knew they were owing money to Wachovia but instead of repaying them, Loop made funds to closer entities and compensated its members without any forms to show the compensation. However, Loop used the LLC benefits for illegal reasons such as,
85), corruption, greed and deception (16-18), the dark side of leadership and how moral separation can lead to unethical decisions (26, 30). The movie also touches on the Golden Rule (Trevino & Nelson p.43), corporate social responsibility (26-27), concealed facts, types of corporate/product safety (362-367), conflicting roles( 271), and the issue of consumer safety versus profit.
This essay will aim to investigate the ethical treatment of shareholders and workers in a traditional, capitalist corporation; The Ford Motor Company and compare and contrast the findings with the treatment of these stakeholders in the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. The structure of this essay will be as follows; firstly the fundamental differences between the two contrasting organisations will be examined and how these differences impact the ethical treatment of the relevant stakeholders; secondly, the ethical treatment of shareholders in regards to corporate governance and the executive’s accountability and control will be investigated, and lastly, the ethical treatment of workers within the two contrasting organisations will be
Between April 20th 2010 and July 15th 2010, BP's drilling rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico was the biggest oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. Eleven people died. # of days later and $ in fines, BP stopped the spilling of oil into the ocean. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) reported on September 17th, “in terms of land animals, at least 3000 have died, tens of thousands of others have been affected [including] millions of sea organisms [although] there is no accurate count”. Conversely, it is unlikely that other than those that have been directly affected can recall the amphetamine weight loss drug scandals between the 1960’s to 1990. For that matter, likely few are motivated enough to look up the
Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche
The documentary starts off with showing the development of the contemporary business corporation, from beginning as a legal entity to then having the entitlement of having most of the legal rights of a person. Since a corporation is said to be a “person”, the documentary then was assessing the corporation as a “personality” and showed viewers everything a corporation was doing wrong in harming a real
There was a vast number of ethical issues raised in the movie “Enron-the Smartest Guys in the Room” but the four I am going to focus on are listed below. Art Anderson, Ken Lay and all of the other executives did a number of unethical things which ultimately brought down Enron and affected thousands of employees and their futures. The bottom line was that each and every one of them acted out of greed for the almighty dollar.
The above formula isolates free cash flows to the firm from earnings before interest and tax (EBIT). It can be noted that FCFF are after tax (1-T) but prior to interest expense. This initial overstatement of due tax is by design; the tax deductibility of interest payments will be accounted for when incorporating the after-tax cost of debt in the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) to determine the present value of free cash flows.
The object of this essay is to establish whether there is an ethical theory that can be successfully applied to business organizations. In order to answer this question, it is necessary first to define the major ethical theories, which are utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics, before determining whether there are any other options. After that, the ethical needs, problems and limitations of work organizations will have to be examined so that the different theories can be evaluated in this context. It will also be important to draw a distinction between the terms “accurate” and “useful” as these actually result in two different questions the answer to which need not necessarily be the same. Another essential part of this discussion
American business should not be permitted to claim it is an ethical firm if it ignores unethical practices by its international suppliers. For the purpose of this assignment I will use the Nike Company to highlight its unethical practices. Despite the popularity of Nike in the American market, it has been accused of exploiting employees abroad. The corporate social responsibility stipulates that a company should maximize its profit and minimizes its cost in operations and manufacturing, also at the same time benefit the community it operates in. This paper will further elaborate on the global strategy employed by Nike Company as it outsources its goods and the unethical issues its
Ethics is something that is very important to have especially in the business world. Ethics is the unwritten laws or rules defined by human nature; ethics is something people encounter as a child learning the differences between right and wrong. In 2001, Enron was the fifth largest company on the Fortune 500. Enron was also the market leader in energy production, distribution, and trading. However, Enron's unethical accounting practices have left the company in joint chapter 11 bankruptcy. This bankruptcy has caused many problems among many individuals. Enron's employees and retirees are suffering because of the bankruptcy. Wall Street and investors have taken a major downturn do to the company's unethical practices. Enron's competitors
Enron and Arthur Anderson were both giants in their own industry. Enron, a Texas based company in the energy trading business, was expanding rapidly in both domestic and global markets. Arthur Anderson, LLC. (Anderson), based out of Chicago, was well established as one of the big five accounting firms. But the means by which they achieved this status became questionable and eventually contributed to their demise. Enron used what if often referred to as “creative” accounting methods, this resulted in them posting record breaking earnings. Anderson, who earned substantial audit and consultation fees from Enron, failed to comply with the auditing standards required in their line of work. Investigations and reports have resulted in finger
Proponents of the knowledge-based theory of the firm point out that this one sided concentration on incentive conflicts in the economics of organizational literature overlooks the production side of the firm. Langlois and Foss, for example, argue that the literature has unreflectively relied on a dichotomy between productive aspects and exchange aspects of the firm, that is, on a dichotomy between production costs and exchange costs. In analyzing exchange costs the literature recognizes that exchange itself is not costless, but involves transaction costs from imperfect knowledge and opportunism. But in analyzing production costs, there has been an embedded agreement that price theory tells us all we need to know about production. As Langlois and Foss point out, however, it is very likely that knowledge about how to produce is imperfect and that knowledge about how to link together one person’s (or organization’s) productive knowledge with that of another is imperfect. These twin issues of capabilities and coordination are discrete from the hazards of astringent that other traditional beliefs have focused on. Both knowledge resources and (imperfect) production costs can be said to vary depending on the attributes of a production process, in the same way that transaction costs differ depending on the asset attributes of investment projects. Thus, instead of holding technology constant across alternative modes of organization as a