Siemens AG Bribery Scandal This paper will focus on the analysis of the well-known and popular bribery scandal in the world, such as Siemens AG Bribery Scandal which occurred in November, 2006. Siemens AG is one of the largest and most popular electrical engineering companies operated in the world. The present company was founded in 1847 in Berlin and is now headquartered in Munich, Germany. The discussion and the proper analysis of this bribery scandal will help to learn many effective lessons from this situation helping organizations and individuals to avoid such cases and experiences in the future. Siemens was considered one of the most powerful and productive companies in the field of electronics and that bribery scandal surely …show more content…
Deming stated that Siemens AG failed “to have and publicize a system whereby employees and agents could report or seek guidance regarding potential or actual criminal conduct without fear of retaliation (Deming 91). Siemens Company and people working there on a regular basis faced a great number of disadvantages associated with the decisions that led to the bribery scandals. The major disadvantages included not only great financial losses due to fines and court procedures but mainly the lack of trust and confidence on the part of customers, investors, business partners and other persons. Siemens simply had to re-gain trust and respect in the world trying to remain competitive, successful and productive either on the national or international business arena. These disadvantages surely affect the organization’s values, beliefs, culture, control, and its strategic ways of doing business in the modern competitive environment. Brooks and Dunn stated that “each line of business had a managing director and a separate managing board, and this structure inhibited accountability and allowed corruption to spread” (Brooks and Dunn 291). The great number of persons was convicted in making illegal payments and being involved into fraudulent bribery activities, such as Andreas Kley, Johannes Feldmayer, Hans-Werner Hartmann, etc. These persons
OECD published Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions and Related Documents to prevent bribery and corruption. The aim of this convention was making the bribery of a foreign public official a crime under their laws (International Monetary Fund, OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, 2001). This document recommends to member countries that:
The global market has shown exemplary contribution to the growth of the world's development until recently where financial crisis have been bombarding most economies. As a result, the cost of livelihood had been unaffordable to many who live below the dollar. The monetary crisis has led to the lowering of many currencies against the dollar, hence advancing the economy crisis to most worldwide nations. This turn of events has been attributed to the lack of exercise of business and management ethics in many multinational companies, firms and investments. Financial scandals have been the order of the past twenty years leading to the sweep over of the flourishing global market. The scandals, especially in larger companies and multinational, are spurred by inter and intra-conflicts in their organizational structures.
Someone who is abusing the power that is given to him or her defines corruption, however, the word in its self is more than a simple idea; it is an intricate network. Since people’s views about ethical and moral behavior affect the way corruption is examined, the word has a slightly different meaning to each person. Additionally, misconduct across various societies is viewed differently due to social and cultural borders. The criminal justice system has had many instances where corruption had affected the outcome of a case and has inserted itself into the legal process.
B. What position in the ValuJet organization did Sabretech fill, why was this a problem? If this were your company would you have used them? ValuJet hire Sabretech, owned by Sabreliner, and licensed by the FAA to perform critical work. If I was a manager for this company I wouldn’t of hire Sabretech. By looking at Sabretech I can see that they were lacking an ethical structure. A Structure that should represent various systems, position, and programs of a company to encourage and support ethical behavior. Such as whistle-blowing an employee disclosure of illegal, unethical practices. By encouraging whistle-blowing employees would not delay in telling regulatory agencies. Perhaps in helping avoid any future tragedy like this one.
Although many things about engineering are positive there is a dark side. We depend on them and while engineers are making innovations for us, and maintaining life as the way we know it they also struggle with ethical issues such as plagiarism, confidentiality, and whistleblowing. Just like the list of golden rules we learned as young children, engineers uphold a list of ethical rules to guide them to make the ethically correct decision when one of these situations arise. Bribery the act of receiving or giving a gift with something required in return is another example of an ethical issue that can entice engineers to break the code (“Gifts and Bribes”, 2006). Unfortunately this was the case for a former manager of the Army Corps of Engineers whose greed caused him to break the ethical canons to “avoid deceptive acts”, to “conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, and lawfully as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession”, and finally to “hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public” (“Code of Ethics”). His misconduct is an example of the unethical decisions some engineers make.
An internal management review of an organization has uncovered many serious issues which lead to block internal and external strategic relationships creation as well as result in poor general awareness in organizational goals, values and ethics.
To make matters worse, Nortel’s Board of administrators failed to have one member that had monetary experience. The twelve-member board was freelance of Nortel, however, most of the members had alternative directorships. This created it troublesome for them to
The case study that was analyzed is, “Unauthorized Disclosure: Hewlett-Packard’s secret Surveillance of Directors and Journalists,” by Anne T. Lawrence, Randal D. Harris, and Sally Baack. The ethical issues presented through the case deal with Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). HP is a major international company in the computer and technology market. The company describes itself as a “technology solutions provider to consumers, business and institutions globally.” Their credo is called “HP way”, which focuses on points such as trust and respect for individuals, high level of achievement and contribution, business conduct with uncompromising integrity, objectives through teamwork, and encouragement of flexibility and innovation (Newman). The problems faced by HP’s board of directors were a lack of accountability with HP’s credo. If the “HP way” was followed by them, these ethical issues would be avoided. It also promotes a bad example by the high-level of management of this globally powerful organization.
In today’s society crime occurs everyday across all aspects of life. One particular crime is that of white collar and corporate level crime. It is important that we as a society study this type of crime in depth because many individuals believe that white collar and corporate level crimes are victimless crimes when in reality they have the potential to destroy major corporations and economies all with one single case. The news or media rarely talk about this type of crime because it is often difficult to understand and individuals typically lack interest in these types of cases. One particular case is that of Jordan Belfort. Dubbed the infamous “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort is a former stockbroker who robbed investors of over $200 million dollars to create his wealth through “pump and dump” schemes, insider trading, money laundering securities fraud, and stock-market manipulation. As an attempt to further understand these complex cases I will break down Belfort’s case as far as the methods and means as to how he got started, his use of “pump and dump” schemes and other means as to how he acquired his wealth. In addition to this I will discuss the sanctions and disciplinary action that Jordan Belfort was given, how the case affected society and what new regulations were
On March 15, 2005 former CEO of WorldCom, Bernard Ebbers sat in a federal courtroom waiting for the verdict. As the former CEO of WorldCom, Ebbers was accused of being personally responsible for the financial destruction of the communications giant. An internal investigation had uncovered $11 billion dollars in fraudulent accounting practices. Later a second report in 2003 found that during Ebber’s 2001 tenure as CEO, the company had over-reported earnings and understated expenses by an astonishing $74.5 billion dollars (Martin, 2005, para 3). This report included the mismanagement of funds, unethical lending practices among its top executives, and false bookkeeping which led to loss of tens of thousands of its employees.
WorldCom was the ultimate success story among telecommunications companies. Bernard Ebbers took the reigns as CEO in 1985 and turned the company into a highly profitable one, at least on the outside. In 2002, Ebbers resigned, WorldCom admitted fraud and the company declared bankruptcy (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, &Wright 2007). The company was at the heart of one of the biggest accounting frauds seen in the United States. The demise of this telecommunications monster can be accredited to many factors including their aggressive-defensive organizational culture based on power and the bullying tactics that they employed. However, this fiasco could have been prevented if WorldCom had designed a system of checks and balances that would have
The research is built on identification of the moral problem identification, analysis of the scandal, optional actions which could have been taken to avoid the
The main problems of the organization were that the company set strategies to achieve objectives that weren’t focused in the core business and set without considering how many resources and skills does the company would need to reach them, focusing their efforts in processes or products that didn’t add value to the company and decreasing the profits of the
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.
The company faced issues related to the methods it used in investigating the unauthorized disclosure of nonpublic information to the press by the members of its board of directors. Apparently, Hewlett Packard hired some investigators in the case. The investigator used various techniques such as pre-texting- calling the telephone company and pose as someone else with an aim of obtaining that person’s information or records. The company and the board chairman, Patricia Dunn, were defending the company’s investigations about the director and the journalist. They cited that there were aggressive efforts to note the core source of leaks that were fully justified by the investigators