In 1998, Betty Vinson was promoted to a senior manager in the firm’s corporate accounting division. Two years later in her position she experienced a major ethical dilemma. The company WorldCom was a very successful company up until the middle of 2000 when the telecommunication industry entered a protracted slump. The company’s earnings were not Wall Street expectations, and it was saddled with unpaid bills. Vinson’s job was to repair the problem by doing some wrong accounting practices. The ethical dilemma is weather she should or shouldn’t do and the consequences if she does or doesn’t do. What ethical decision should Betty Vinson take? The first right decision is to do the wrong accounting practice. Vinson was told that it was only …show more content…
The WorldCom employees could loose their jobs and causing higher unemployment. Other businesses could loose they’re jobs too if they had strong relationship with WorldCom. The picture would not look good for the community as a whole. The members of the board would feel guilty not seeing this mistake in their hands of power. The members of the board would leave the shareholders empty handed. All of this could occur if Vinson decided not to take any part of wrongdoing. WorldCom would have no chance producing revenue and therefore it would go bankrupt. The right decision I personally would make, would be the second decision-making. The reason for this action is because I care about my status and not off others. I care that I do not commit any White Collar Crime. My belief is that sooner or later the actions will be caught and I do not want to be part of it. I am pretty sure that I could find another job somewhere else with a great history of a job position. My primary virtue is to do the right thing. I hate doing something that I believe is not fair and unethical. I could not accept being a senior manager to Director of Management Reporting, when I know how wrongfully I did my previous job. I care what I love, and that is my family. If my wife urged me to quit the job, I would give thoughts about it but still agree with her. The ability to make my family happy is far more important than the employees at work.
This post will discuss two ethical accounting dilemmas that could occur in the CPA profession. For each dilemma, it will explain how the dilemma could be resolved based on logic and reason. It will then support that proposed resolution through support from the American Institute of Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) Code of Professional Conduct.
In making my decision I would consider choosing the decision that is ethical, in addition, I would come up with alternatives that can help save employees’ jobs.
The stakeholders in this fraudulent case of WorldCom consist of Bernie Ebbers, Scott Sullivan, Buford Yates, David Myers, Cynthia Cooper, and Betty Vinson belong to the company. While the other stakeholders would consist of the creditors, Andersen (accounting firm), investors, and the public. This fraudulent act committed within WorldCom impacted every single stakeholder in a way. Either in a negative or positive way, most of the impact was caused with harm to everyone. The main individuals such as Ebbers, Sullivan, and Vinson all had major consequences as resulting with the fraud. Criminal trials were a major result with their fraudulent acts within WorldCom. Cooper was a lifesaver by most of the community. Aside from these individuals, the rest also got affected by the fraud. Investments conducted by the investors were all lost within the fraud process. The impact towards much of the image for Andersen was ruined. Many of the public lost their trust on the honesty and professionalism of Andersen and other certified public accounting firms. The entire employees from the top management to the smaller group of workers stayed unemployed and some with criminal punishment.
Everyday individuals are faced with issues associated with ethical dilemmas. Ethical dilemmas involve an individual’s behavior toward a moral standard, which may have been established from previous generations and passed along. In upholding the standards taught individual may be forced to take a particular action involving a decision when a behavior is considered non-ethical is when an ethical dilemma occurs. It can become difficult at times in making the correct decisions or solutions to the situation, which is why a code of ethics is established in the workplace. The code of ethics in the
Due to these criminal activities, many top executives were convicted fraud and sentenced to spend time in prison. WorldCom activities did not align with the company's overall mission and goals. The actions taken by management were not in the best interest of the customer instead they were consumed with acquisitions and increasing the value of WorldCom Shares. The management also should have considered general accounting practices during their strategic planning. Furthermore, create procedures that protect all stakeholders within the firm.
It is a relevant ethical dilemma because it is a situation in which an ethical decision needs to be made by a businessman (CFO of Gabriel Resources) where viable options to this case are available which will be judged further in this essay by applying ethical theory and concepts.
2. Ethical Issues in Business. It seems that every day in the news we are hearing of new company that has acted at least unethically and possibly illegally in the operation and financial reporting of their company's business dealings. There are many ethical issues in business. One major issue that we see is over and under reporting net income. Companies like to show that every quarter the net income of the business has an increase or profit. In order to show this they adopt unethical or illegal means in the operation and financial reporting. One such method is the indiscriminate use of stock options for employees that enable companies to take employment costs off balance sheet and inflate earnings. With the recent ethical issues we have
In today's business and personal world, ethical decisions are made on a daily basis. Most of these decisions are based on company ground rules. The others are based on personal ground rules. All decisions can have a number of ground rules that help us determine whether our decision is ethical or unethical. Each decision whether it is based on company or personal ground rules will have its own set of implications. In the following paragraphs I will discuss the impacts of ethics on decision-making, discuss the elements of an ethically defensible decision, define what the ground rules are; what they could be and what they should be, discuss
The ethical dilemma Bob faces in this case is a transaction that makes Bob question his and the company’s ethics and legal obligations. It’s February, business was slow, the company was $5,000 below their breakeven point, and it appeared as if a
From time to time, corporate executives encounter ethical dilemmas that seem rather challenging. In this text, I concern myself with an ethical dilemma faced by the top leadership of Nutritional Foods Inc. In so doing, I will amongst other things explain (in detail) the actions I would take were I to find myself in a similar scenario. I will also explain not only the reasoning behind my actions, but also the results I would be expecting.
2. Suppose Ford officials were asked to justify their decision. What moral principles do you think they would invoke? Assess Ford’s
Using 2 different companies as example, analyse and evaluate the ethical decision making process within a business setting.
Ethical issues have greatly transformed in our lives since the great Enron, Xerox and other huge corporations proposed big profits showing earnings of billions of dollars and yet in reality facing bankruptcy. These corporations faced great trouble with the federals and state for manipulating financial statements. But not only corporations can be blamed on this, accounting firms were involved in this as much as the corporations were. With the business stand point, ethics comprises of principles and standards that guide behavior. Investors, traders, customers, and legal system determine whether a specific action is ethical or unethical. Ethical issue is a vast subject, but we will look at the niche
Today, employees can be considered as the greatest strength of the company. They are the ones who help build the reputation of the company, it is their job to ensure the success of the business, which is why it is very important to keep them satisfied. A recent statistic shows that an American worker has an average of eight jobs in his career (Rudman, 2003). This stat shows how difficult it is to retain a core strength of a company. In this essay, an analysis of a case study is made. The case includes at first, a discussion between Chip Brownlee and Arch carter, the CEO and lead director of Galvatrens respectively. During this conversation, they discussed a lawsuit that a former employee sent to the company for being wrongfully relieved of his duty. Also in the case study after investigation the board of Galvatrens and their CEO made a meeting in order to tackle the problems and know what really happened. In this essay, it will explain the main ethical dilemmas in the case study, and according to these dilemmas a comparison will be made between utilitarian, libertarian, deontological and virtue ethics perspectives. Finally, as a form of an ethical point of view will be used to be the best solution to solve the dilemma of the recommendation.
An ethical dilemma arises when there is a conflict between the interest of the company and the rest of the stakeholders (Withey, 2012). Toyota is a profit making company that released millions of cars into the market without knowing that they could accelerate themselves suddenly. The Congress was mandated to investigate the matter, but 40 out of the 125 members of the relevant committee had received campaign funds from Toyota (BBC Worldwide Americas, Inc., 2015). Toyota had also spent $ 25 million