Ethics Is Defined By Hellriegel And Stocum

There are lots of Unethical Actions that occur in a company. In September 2016, Wells Fargo was involved in a scandal that involved over 5,000 employees had made fake accounts and were eventually fired. There are 269,100 employees in the Wells Fargo organization, 2%, which is 5,300employees of the organization were let go. The Wells Fargo scandal had started in January of 2009 to September of 2016 and more fake accounts are still being made by Wells Fargo. There was so many employees involved in this scandal, therefore making it really bad for the company Wells Fargo. One of the reasons why the employees were fired from the scandal was because the people were feeling pressured to meet hard to reach performance goals. As the employees felt more anxiety, their ethical behavior became

The unethical behavior portrayed by Enron’s senior management was ultimately the result of greed and lack of control and proper oversight combined with, intense,competitive, result driven corporate culture that made it easier to ignore Enron’s codes of ethics that gave rise to manipulation of financial reports; hidden losses and SPE’s, suspicious partnerships. Adding to the employee stress was the organization evaluation system that forced employee to either find another position in the company or have their contract terminated and therefore employees were afraid to lose their jobs and followed unethical and illegal practices.

Although the relationship between ethics and business performance is still the subject of controversy, the Enron case is a demonstration that the lack of ethical behavior is inseparable from the competitive disadvantage. The question is not so much whether the disaster could be avoided if the company had adopted from the beginning, transparency criteria. The main thing to know as citizens, so far reputed and honest, have managed to create an environment to bring their managers to take ethically reprehensible and economically untenable positions.

As many things in life, ethics has evolved through the history of our society. As anyone who has ever has read the news can attest, there are certain behaviors and tradition typical in societies around the world that may seem unethical and, sometimes, inhuman when seen through our ethical point of view. However, we often forget that many of those behaviors and tradition were, not only accepted, but expected in our society at one time. As our society changes over time, our moral code and compass shifts changing our outlook and tolerance for certain behaviors. And, as in other aspects of our society, the way we conduct business is no different.

Ethics is the study of right and wrong and can be thought of as almost identical to moral law. The word Ethics comes from the Latin word mos and the Greek word ethos, meaning ‘the way things are done’. Thomas Nagel, a professor of philosophy and Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Law at New York University is a well-known writer of Ethics who provides an insightful perspective to ethical reasoning. Nagel believes there are objective moral truths; he claims one can perform a moral act that is defensible from "an external point of view" and cannot be reduced to an act arising simply from subjective or personal preferences. Objectivity and subjectivity must be clarified in order to grasp Nagel’s assertions. Objectivity is external and naturalistic; a universal sense for everyone. Subjectivity is internal and does not need any external authority. Given that the essence of objectivity and subjectivity is now understood; by looking at the argumentative evidence Thomas Nagel provides in his book The Last Word, one must examine how he establishes his belief of objective moral truths in natural law, reason, reflection, language, intentionality; and whether or not he is successful in doing so.

(Exploring Management) They want to make their goals, but they know that the goal is set way too high to anywhere within reason. So many of the Wells Fargo branches did their best to keep up with the sales quota. So, to keep up they created the fraudulent bank accounts to appease their bosses. When it seemed that most of the employees were doing what they could to meet the quota, others knew of the unethical behavior and did not want to stand for it. So, they called Wells Fargo’s ethics hotline to report the fraud and poor treatment. It did not go as the employees had thought it would. “One former Wells Fargo HR official said the bank had a method in place to retaliate against tipsters.” (Egan, Matt) So, thus many employees lost their jobs reporting the unethical behavior and unethical sales practices. One horrible case of that included Bill Bado, “Bado refused to open fake accounts. Sent emails and called the ethics hotline to bring the issue to light as was part of his job and was fired eight days after he sent the email. For supposed tardiness.” (Egan, Matt) One from one ethical failure to another. You had Managers calling for unreasonable sales quotas, so then you had branch employees open fraudulent accounts, which in turn had ethical employees trying to blow the whistle at all the bad behavior only to be fired in return for doing the right

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,

As long as a person can alter some numbers to create more income for themselves, fraud will always exist. Countrywide was one of the more flamboyant ethical violators in the housing mortgage market, much like Bernie Madoff was to the Ponzi scheme, but the ethical atrocities occurring during the early 2000’s reached much deeper than these two examples. Countrywide settled a class action suit worth $600 million before the $170 million whistleblower lawsuits that were settled in once they were acquired by Bank of America (Rexrode & Martin, 2014). Almost $800 million in lawsuits related to the ethical lapses that was organization wide and industry wide during this period of time. A simple, random search of 2011 corporate fraud cases includes AIG commits $1 billion in fraud, Janitor Company underreports $10 million in payroll and gains $2 million in income (North Carolina Worker compensation Journal, 2011). These are simply a couple of the reports from that year, indicating organizations have not learned, but have taken the ‘it won’t happen to us’ viewpoint or have learned more sophisticated methods for covering up their inaccuracies with book keeping. Ethical viability simply does not matter the way it did before money became such a driving force of the economy. Once people who had not previously been able to afford a half a million dollar home, could inflate their income a little and be approved, marked the wild west mentality of Countrywide, and the lengths they would go to in

The management at wells Fargo relied on compliance as a strategy for managing its ethics (YouTube, 2018). The management set standards that employees were expected to meet. For instance one employee reports that in the line of work she realized that she was unable to meet the set goal. She decided to call the banks ethics hotline to explain to the management that there was no ethical way of making such huge sales (Cowley, 2018). The management at Wells Fargo was using the low-level employees to open accounts without informing the customers (YouTube, 2018). Although the management says that these was not the company’s culture as reported by the employees. The same workers who were engaging in opening more accounts were working in the same roof

Bernie Madoff and Enron did not make ethics mandatory within their corporation, therefore trust nor could success be established. When that happens a chain reaction from ethical behavior to non-ethical behavior occurs. Non-ethical behavior is what scorned their corporation and generated bad publicity. Shareholders and corporate partners lose their confidence in the corporation and gave their money, business, and support to similar companies. By being non-ethical lead to their finical failure and the failure of their business. By not being truthful with the shareholders, financials it is easy to see how the actual companies failed. Corporate partners could not count on the company when it came down to making business decisions. That’s what caused the bad publicity for their company and keep them in the negative attention drawn to their business.

When thinking of the best way to be responsible in all dealings of business, a quote from Bank of America and Wells Fargo comes to mind. Bank of America states that they believe that integrity and the disciplined management of risk form the foundation of their business. They are aware that their decisions and actions affect people’s lives every day. They furthermore believe in making decisions that are clear, fair, and grounded in the principles of shared success, responsible citizenship, and community building. Wells Fargo states they expects its team members to adhere to the highest possible standards of ethics and business conduct with customers, team members, stockholders and the communities it serves, and to comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations that govern our businesses. Their Code of Ethics and Business Conduct rules sets forth Wells Fargo's policy and standards concerning ethical conduct for all team members. Their aim is to promote an atmosphere in which ethical behavior is well recognized as a priority and practiced.

As for the ethics or what could be referred to as ethical conduct I have notice that it is a vital and crucial part for the home equity loan business. The home equity loan business is always under the microscope because of the amount of money that it is dealing with and having to demand payments being paid in full. When the crisis hit the real estate industry back when President Bush was in office along with the economy hitting a low it caused the home equity lenders to regroup and to get creative in finding ways to lend money along

Lehman Brothers adopted the utilitarian view of ethics, in which decisions were made based on outcomes and/or consequences. They concerned themselves with making enough profits to satisfy the greedy yearnings of the top few at the top hierarchy of management not minding if their activities were detrimental to the welfare of others. (ukessays.com) This was clearly seen in the mind-boggling case of Coleen Colombo.

“Maintaining an ethical culture may be impossible if CEO’s and other top officers do not support an ethical culture” (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2015, Pg232). An employee can choose to refuse participation in the illegal and unethical acts and follow their own values (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2015). Furthermore, An employee can choose to report the wrongdoing either internally or externally which is defined as becoming the whistleblower of an organization. As an Executive of Fraud Complaint Management, Eileen Foster chose to follow her on values and uphold the code of ethics at Countrywide Financial. As a result of her whistleblower activity, Ms. Foster was terminated from her duties in September 2008 (GAP, 2012).

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