Were The Actions Of Bernard Ebbers Effective Deviant Behavior

Because the telecom industry was doing well in the 90's, Ebbers became very rich as the value of WorldCom's stock climbed. However in the early 2000s the industry took a swing for the worst, earnings rejected, and WorldCom's stock began to fall. Ebbers quickly became "upside down" on his stock holdings and owed millions to the banks he borrowed money from. In a desperate attempt to prevent himself from going bankrupt, Ebbers and other company executives began fraudulently altering WorldCom's financial statements. Many people were hurt by the WorldCom fraud. Lots of honest, hard working line level WorldCom employees lost their jobs while losing the value of the stock in their WorldCom retirement savings accounts at the same time. Other investors who depended on WorldCom's false financial statements also lost what they invested. Nobody really benefited from the scandal, however it did give the executives a couple more years of glory and power before everything went

How much reliance should Enron’s corporate BOD have placed on the Andersen in understanding the company’s accounting decisions and policies?

Select one of the eight leaders discussed in the Wills' text in Chapters 1 through 8 and discuss why a consideration of his or her leadership at a former point in time is important to an understanding of leadership today. Note: This activity will require that you read about the leader in additional sources. Be sure to properly document any additional sources you use.

What makes an effective leader? To what extent does effective leadership mean being morally good?

Choose two business leaders either living or deceased, and provide three examples that illustrate how they demonstrated leadership characteristics. For each of the people in the chosen examples, compare and contrast the differences between his / her leadership characteristics.

1. What are the consequences of labeling? 2. Being labeled because for your actions did it affect your personal life? 3.

1. As the former chief executive officer of WorldCom, Bernie Ebbers was hailed as a great leader during those days when the company was doing extremely well from the Wall Street standpoint. However, when the company was swamped by financial scandals which turned to be one of the largest bankruptcies in the U.S. history, he was discredited for his failure to provide moral leadership with destructive deviant behavior. His behavior exhibited characteristics of hypocritical leader who was high on the communication of an ethics agenda but not perceived as a moral person (Trevino & Brown, 2005).

Identify and describe leadership styles demonstrated by the main characters? Be sure to include specific details and scenes.

1. To what extent where the actions of Bernard Ebbers indicative of leadership, and to what extent did Ebbers

1. This chapter suggests that leadership has a moral dimension and that leaders have a responsibility to use their authority for the common good. Do you agree? Discuss

Brown，p90,2004）. Unfortunately, Ebbers did The half-sentence was successful, but it was betrayed by the second half. In the second half of the mad expansion of WorldCom, Ebbers demonstrated severely destructive leadership and took most of the responsibility for WorldCom's failure. The cowboy president’s madman performed a life-threatening tragicomedy. When Ebbers generously borrowed huge bank money to buy stocks of the company, the situation had become very unusual, and he provided personal loans to key senior executives for this purpose. These loans are not documented in the company, and all of these are foreshadowed for the destruction.From January 2001 to March 2002, Berne Ebbers and the chief Finance Officer - Scott Sullivan, converts total operating expenses of billions into capital expenditures, and fabricates 5 quarters of profit of billions big lie. "EBITDA" was a brand new accounting term created by him that means: Profit before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization, which is often referred to as "margin". So-called "amortization" means that the company The intangible assets created by mergers and acquisitions—goodwill—can be digested in batches and internalized, and then converted into tangible assets of “net gains.” Because of the special

(Farrell, 2005, para 1). Unfortunately for Ebbers, the grand jury wasn’t ignorant to the facts of the case and found Ebbers guilty on nine counts of fraud. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Many critics felt that the sentence was too harsh and others not harsh enough. The sentencing of Ebbers did not change the situation of the shareholders and employees who lost more than $100 billion in stock value, 17,000 jobs and their entire retirement savings. Ebbers was allowed to keep one of his homes, $50,000 in cash and a retirement account (Ernst & Young, 2005, para 6). Many supporters of Ebbers still questioned how much of a role he actually played in masterminding the WorldCom scandal. The

Question “3”: Behavioural theory of leadership (explain one theory by linking it with the case study):

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

2.2 A leader’s Profile - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 3~4