Organizations engage in unlawful or illegal activity solely for the purpose of profit and/or enhanced social status. This may include small-scale or large-scale organizations that adopt criminally-inclined mechanisms which come in the form of of financial crime, white collar crime, political crime, war crime, etc. The article published by Hotten (2015), “Volkswagen: The scandal explained,” discusses how Volkswagen managed to falsify emissions tests in efforts to maximize profits at the expense of the consumers’ health and the external environment. Although the scandal is not a direct product of organized crime, it is a clear example of how organizations fall into the trap of “routine nonconformity.” Routine nonconformity is when legitimate organizations deviate from normative standards and expectations to produce unfavorable outcomes (Vaughan 1999). The article addresses the phenomenon of routine nonconformity through Volkswagen’s use of advanced software technology, the complexity of managerial decision making, and the negative implications it has on other carmakers and the diesel industry. The article will be analyzed using the scholarly work of Vaughan, D. (1999) article “The Dark Side of Organizations: Mistake, Misconduct, and Disaster.”
In the year of 2015, Volkswagen prioritized organizational efficiency and financial sustainability over corporate social responsibility. To illustrate, the EPA (the Environmental Protection Agency) discovered that the Volkswagen cars
Many firms are learning that being environmentally friendly and sustainable has numerous benefits. (O.C Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2015). This could enable them to increase goodwill from various stakeholders and also save money in the long term. This will mean that they are being more efficient and less wasteful of resources, which will enable them to be more competitive by satisfying stakeholders. The CEO of
This shows that such a reputable company is only paying lip service to the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) concept despite vowing to be "the most sustainable automaker in the world by 2018" in the Volkswagen AG Annual Report 2013
Today’s society now has a greater concern for the environment which can affect the automobile industry. More people want hybrid or fuel efficient cars to decrease their carbon footprint. People also want to see businesses take on more corporate social responsibility as well as continuing advances in technology.
This article drives into how deep America is corrupt and the rocket scandals. The author attains to explain the current state of managerial capitalism in American big corporation further he describes the fundamental reasons for decay in business ethics in order to meet the bottom line standards. Challahan marks the outcome from day to day business such as auto mechanic services , law officers and corporate executive to prove that always people choose financial stability over integrity .
The Volkswagen (VW) corporation experienced a major scandal after it conspired to manipulate data for diesel emissions. Business ethics, legal issues, and a Biblical worldview are common areas of failure and are clearly present in this case. Lippe (2015) stated that these acts were deliberate and examined the responsibility of legal counsel to mitigate such acts. If not for road testing by engineer, John German, excess emissions may not have been detected, and due to outcry, VW admitted to their technologically sophisticated fraud (Patra, 2016). God’s Word reveals, “But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known” (Luke 12:2 New American Standard
Over the last decade, headlines have told stories of unethical behavior from corporations such as Enron, Worldcom, Boeing, Xerox, and Rite Aid. As business continued to grow, so has the laws and regulations that govern corporations to make sure they continue to practices their business legally and ethically. Rules and regulations are made because of the unethical practices that corporations have made due to greed and power.
Are businesses in corporate America making it harder for the American public to trust them with all the recent scandals going on? Corruptions are everywhere and especially in businesses, but are these legal or are they ethical problems corporate America has? Bruce Frohnen, Leo Clarke, and Jeffrey L. Seglin believe it may just be a little bit of both. Frohnen and Clarke represent their belief that the scandals in corporate America are ethical problems. On the other hand, Jeffrey L. Seglin argues that the problems in American businesses are a combination of ethical and legal problems. The ideas of ethical problems in corporate America are illustrated differently in both Frohnen and Clarke’s essay and Seglin’s essay.
This typology includes government and other senior authorities in positions of trust who manhandle their influence for private increase/illegal advancement through washing of the returns of defilement. The exemplary technique utilized is complicity with suppliers of products and administrations in under-or over-invoicing merchandise and administrations supplied to the establishments headed by the degenerate
Except this behavior is not isolated to these enterprises alone. In the United States, this behavior of corruption is swaying more towards a social norm. In fact, so communal that it is anticipated when regular companies or constituents intermingle with government representatives. The end game in this tit-for-tat competition of legal deviance is a kleptocracy, which precisely translates to “rule by thieves.” Social deviance within the justice system is a breach of social norms, therefore who thrives as a social deviant? Concurring with the works of sociologist, Howard S. Becker the best characterization of social deviance is, “It is not the act itself, but the reactions to the act, that do something
This article begins by exploring the notion of society’s trust in the corporation despite the many scandals that have come to light in recent years. Examples of huge scandals of the 1990s that were sensationalised in the media include Enron’s accounting fraud, the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, and Bre-X’s falsified mining operations.
“In the early part of this decade ethical scandals erupted though corporate America. Corporate Leaders from major companies such as Enron were caught up in scandal’s ranging from fraud, conspiracy, grand larceny to obstruction of justice” (Cross, 2011, p. 76). At the time, the Enron scandal was considered to be one of the most notorious and compelling business ethics cases in modern generations. It’s was a textbook version of what can go wrong in an organization that lacks a true culture of ethical standards. Investors and the media once considered Enron to be the company of the future, but as its demise suggests, it was in reality not a particularly modern business organization, especially in its approach to ethics.
The principal motivation of corporate executives and decision makers for committing organizationally-based business crimes is pure greed, whether it be for the benefit of the company or individual. Two cases come to mind. The first is the Ford Pinto fiasco of the 1970s and 1980s. Ford has a gas tank design flaw in the pinto that caused many horrific burn deaths and injuries. Instead of fixing the problem, the leaders of Ford decided to take the cheaper way out and pay injury and death claims instead. Greed caused the company to spend $49.5 million instead of ethically spending $137 million to fix the flaw (Afflitto, 2015).
In the Encyclopaedia of White-Collar Crime, co-authors Jurg Gerber and Eric. L Jensen define corporate crime as “violations of federal or state laws that are committed by employees on behalf of the company rather than simply for their own gain.” The definition and classification of what falls under a corporate crime is highly problematic in that corporations can afford defence lawyers that can find loopholes in the legislation in order to avoid charges. Even more perplexing, is that “corporations define the laws under which they live” according to Russell Mokhiber report’s Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the Decade (1996) published in the Corporate Crime Reporter. Mokhiber introduces the example that “the automobile industry... has worked its will on Congress to block legislation that would impose criminal sanctions on knowing and wilful
With billions of dollars invested and hundreds of thousands of Americans employed (Department of Commerce, n.d.), the automobile industry has a vast influence in the United States. Since the time Henry Ford developed the assembly line production (Statista, n.d.) the industry has grown into a global market with no signs of slowing down. Top car companies are constantly searching for new innovations to set them apart from their competitors. Among those companies is Volkswagen (VW). A company which strides in emissions and fuel efficiency turned, not only to be false, but caused a severe amount of damage (Ewing, 2016).
The overwhelming facts point to a shady underworld of self-dealing and opportunistic exploitation of the poor and working class, which was until recently, well hidden from the commoner. The executives of WorldCom and Enron provide real world examples of unethical business practices, where the desire to make money for their shareholders transcended into an addiction to greed and self-dealing that were displayed by their, “excessive pay, perks, and golden parachutes”(Carson 392) at the expense of all stakeholders. All is not lost, there are corporations that pride themselves in their sound business model and commitment to ethical business practices. Such companies as Eaton Corporation, and Weyerhaeuser, who according to Ethisphere.com, a business ethics watchdog, are among the “2010 World`s most ethical companies.” (Ethisphere)