The Problems Faced By Sarbanes Oxley

Sarbanes –Oxley Act, enacted by the United States congress is aimed at protecting investors. The protection is provided by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures.

Throughout history and in our own time, legitimate accounting methods have been utilized to fraudulently engage in manipulating activities that results in illicit gains to the perpetrators and losses to individuals and financial institutions.

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.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act is an act passed by the United States Congress to protect investors from the possibility of fraudulent accounting activities by corporation. The Sarbanes Oxley Act has strict reforms to improve financial disclosures from corporations and accounting fraud. The acts goals are designed to ensure that publicly traded corporations document what financial controls they are using and they are certified in doing so. The Sarbanes Oxley Act sets the highest level and most general requirements but it imposes the possibility of criminal penalties for corporate financial officers. The Sarbanes Oxley Act sets provisions that are used throughout numerous amounts of corporations. It holds companies to a larger responsibility and a higher standard with accounting principles and the accuracy of financial statements.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush to “mandate a number of reforms to enhance corporate responsibility, enhance financial disclosures and combat corporate and accounting fraud” and applies to all public companies in the U.S., large and small (The Laws That Govern the Securities Industry, 2015). The main purpose of Sarbanes-Oxley is to “eliminate false disclosures” and “prevent undisclosed conflicts of interest between corporations and their analysts, auditors, and attorneys and between corporate directors, officers, and shareholders” (Neghina & Riger, 2009). As a whole, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is very complex and affected organizations must do their due diligence to ensure they

Prior to the advent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, referred to herein as “SOX,” the board of directors’ pivotal role was to advise senior leaders on the organization’s strategy, business model, and succession planning (Larcker, 2011, p. 3). Additionally, the board had the responsibility for risk management identification and risk mitigation oversight, determining executive benefits, and approval of significant acquisitions (Larcker, 2011, p. 3). Furthermore, for many public organizations, audit committees existed before SOX and provided oversight of internal processes and controls. Melissa Maleske (2012) advised that the roles and responsibilities of the board were viewed “…from a perspective that the board serves management” (p. 2). In contrast, Maleske (2012) noted that SOX regulations altered the landscape “…to a perspective that management is working for the board” (p. 2). SOX expanded not only the duties of the board and the audit committee, but also the authority of these bodies (Maleske, 2012, p. 2).

White collar crime has been around for ages. Today more and more news stories can be found where the elite, the top executives of fortune 500 companies, are being prosecuted for participating in illegal activities. It was hoped that the passing of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2001 after the Enron debacle would reduce the amount of illegal acts being committed in corporate America. The Sarbanes Oxley act makes executives personally responsible for their activities requiring top management to sign off on financial statements stating they are true and accurate and these executives can face jail time for committing fraudulent acts. Unfortunately, immorality in business is still running rampant. One illegal practice we see happening in

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, is an act passed by U.S. Congress on July 30, 2002. The primary reason was to protect investors from the possibility of fraudulent accounting activities by corporations. The act is commonly known as SOX Act. The act is named after its cosponsors, U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes and U.S. Representative Michael G. Oxley. It mandates strict reforms to improve financial disclosures from corporations and prevent accounting fraud. The Sarbanes Oxley Act is arranged into eleven titles. They are Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), Auditor Independence, Corporate Responsibility, Enhanced Financial Disclosures, Analyst Conflicts of Interest, Commission Resources and Authority, White Collar Crime Penalty Enhancement, Corporate Tax Returns, and Corporate Fraud Accountability. These titles provide the description of specific requirements and mandates for the financial reporting. The SOX Act monitors compliance through various sections. However, the most significant sections are 302 (Disclosure controls), 401 (Disclosures in periodic reports), 404 (Assessment of internal control), 802 (Criminal penalties for influencing US Agency investigation/proper administration). As a result of SOX Act, the top management must individually certify the accuracy of financial information. The Act increased the oversight role of board of directors and the independence of the outside

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passes in 2002 in response to a handful of large corporate scandals that occurred between the years 2000 to 2002, resulting in the losses of billions of dollars by investors. Enron, Worldcom and Tyco are probably the most well known companies that were involved in these scandals, but there were a number of other companies guilty of such things as well. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed as a way to crackdown on corporations by setting new and improved standards that all United States’ public companies and accounting firms were and are required to abide by. It also works to hold top level executives accountable for the company, and if fraudulent behaviors are discovered then the executives could find themselves in hot water. The punishments for such fraudulence could be as serious as 20 years jail time. (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The primary motivation for the act was to prevent future scandals from happening, or at least, make it much more difficult for them to happen. The act was also passed largely to protect the people—the shareholders—from corporations, their executives, and their boards of directors. Critics tend to argue that the act is to complicated, and costs to much to abide by, leading to the United States losing its “competitive edge” in the global marketplace (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The Sarbanes-Oxley act, like most things, has its pros and cons. It is costly; studies have shown that this act has cost companies millions of

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX Act, was enacted on July 30, 2002. Since it was enacted that summer it has changed how the public business handle their accounting and auditing. The federal law was made coming off of a number of large corporations involved in scandals. For example a company like Enron was caught in accounting fraud in late 2001 when the company was using false financial statements. Once Enron was caught that had many lawsuits filed against them and had to file for bankruptcy. It was this scandal that played a big part in producing the Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002.

The year 2002 marked a critical time for many corporate businesses as it was known for one of the most infamous years in organizational scandal. The Enron debacle, Tyco, Adelphia, and WorldCom all were involved in some sort of corruption. These corporations misfortunate mishaps was the driving force for the implementation of ethical laws. One law in particular was the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). This law was enacted to help restore integrity and public confidence to the financial markets (Orin, R. 2008). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is not a law that is new to the scene of corporate America, in fact in 1934 the Securities and Exchange Commission was introduced to help police the U.S. financial markets. As a result,

The act (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) is a law formed to stop corporate scam. Through it, companies are banned from discriminating any staff who lawfully helps in giving information in conduct researches that the workers sensibly considers to be a violation of National Securities Laws (Eaton, 2007). In the case above, it addressed air pollution, emissions and cars. The act would not apply to the two engineers as whistleblowers since the law only protects the corporation’s staffs that feel they are being hit back against by their boss after perceiving an infringement of National Securities Laws. As a result, the two are safe. Their whistleblowing case is unique since they were not working for any Fortune 500 Company. They are simply university researchers.

Financial regulation is a critical aspect that helps the stakeholders to ensure that companies present accurate and reliable information to its stakeholders. In Dr. Jasso’s article “Sarbanes-Oxley-Context & Theory”, he addresses the Sarbanes-Oxley Act from a historical and philosophical context, where the firm is depicted by both philosophers which are Aristotle and Adam Smith. They are the leading thinkers on the concept of business and capitalism and how it impacts our society as a whole. Next, Dr. Jasso also examines the problems of market failure and information asymmetry, and he explains how these theories related to the SOX and corporation’s bad behaviors. Lastly, he analyzes the SOA from policy analyst’s perspective. Overall, the author argues that SOX is an effective and good legislation because it is a reactive policy that response to firm’s unethical and bad behaviors such as the accounting fraud on Enron, Adelphia, and Global Crossing. The author also believes that SOX will be continuing benefit the stakeholders such as the investors in the futures, and it will be cultivating good corporate ethical behaviors as well. I think that the

Part of the daily routine during childhood is learning the difference between right and wrong, and a child’s behavior will change as they grow older, which proves they understand being dishonest or lying is wrong and there will be consequences to pay. Regardless of a person’s surroundings, they should never put their integrity in jeopardy, however, more often than not greed prevails as the winner. Most people do not accept a position within an organization looking to become rich, seek sexual favors, or be corrupt. The temptation is in every organization and those who cannot resist temptation become Gonin, Palazzo, and Hoffrage (2012) the actors, who fill the role and offer solutions through their evil persuasiveness demeanor. These types of people are the reason for the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act and more government regulations on businesses and money deals. Those who keep their

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was enacted in July 30, 2002, by Congress to protect shareholders and the general public from fraudulent corporate practices and accounting errors and to maintain auditor independence.   In protecting the shareholders and the general public the SOX Act is intended to improve the transparency of the financial reporting.   Financial reports are to be certified by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) creating increased responsibility and independence with auditing by independent audit firms. In discussing the SOX Act, we will focus on how this act affects the CEOs; CFOs; outside independent audit firms; the advantages and a