Olympus was founded in October 12, 1919 and is headquartered in Shinjuku, Japan. The company’s core business areas are: Camera and Audio, Industrial Testing instruments, Life Science Imaging Systems, and Medical and Surgical Products. Olympus operates in Asia, North & South America, Europe, Australia, The Middle East and Africa1. According to Olympus’ 2011 Annual report its primary competitive advantage is its expertise in endoscopes, having the leadership position with 70% global market share due to its continual research to development in ground-breaking technology. Olympus created uniqueness in the photo industry with the successful launch of E-M5 compact camera in 2012. Since the scandal Olympus has embraced “Back to Basics”, slogan which has maintained their advantage in their product and service offering27. Olympus is one of the few companies in the world, with development and manufacturing technologies which provides services and products which serves needs between diagnosis and treatment28.
Olympus’ values and philosophies are:
• Meeting the challenge of becoming number one in technology
• Dedication to meeting and exceeding customer needs
• Strengthening our brand through quality
• Personal development through manufacturing2.
In 2011, Olympus was exposed when the Board fired their new CEO and 30-year veteran Michael Woodford. The scandal revealed concealment (Tobashi) of at least 177 billion Yen in investment losses and questionable payments for two decades as well as suspicion of linkage and payments to criminal organizations. Some magazines suggested Yakuza, an organized criminal group, were the beneficiaries of the funds. It became one of the biggest and longest loss-concealing financial scandals in the history of Japa...
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... diligence to ensure independence and adequate financial and business acumen. The board should replace overly aggressive financial initiatives with achievable goals and report transparent results. To ensure results are transparent the board should have auditors review reports for errors or misdoings. The auditors should feel comfortable in providing results and the board empowered to take action. At the management level, ethical behaviour should be promoted with organizational training and communication to reinforce that employees at all levels have the responsibility to report unethical behaviour. Lastly, there should be an official company-wide code of conduct along with a whistleblower/fraud hotline25. The general counsel office should have an independent party and periodically review the hotline processes to ensure reports are being documented and investigated.
Equinox is more than just a gym; it’s the Rolls Royce of gyms. By placing heavy emphasis on luxury and high-performance, Equinox delivers a product that parallels to the luxury lifestyle of their clientele. Its one-of-a-kind vibe combined with a sophisticated and daring attitude resonates throughout the brand and their facilities. Equinox’s marketing tactics fixates on a clean-cut design with the brand’s promise to deliver “substance with style”; this attention into reinventing their image has proven to be successful over the years. Everything from their website, social media, blog, mobile app, to their edgy ads has touch of luxury that allows them to successfully sell not only a gym membership, but a lifestyle to their clients.
Restructure the company and clearly define job responsibilities. This would result in a more efficient operation within and between departments and ensure that people know exactly who is responsible for what tasks. This would also reduce the need for Mr. Wallace to get involved in settling disputes and improve the overall moral among the managers.
This report is an analysis on the specified locations aimed at drawing insights about the outer touch and inner landscape of geography Eaton centre Eaton Centre stands out, as the ideal retail destination with millions of tourist, flowing in it is the perfect icon for materialism culture. In addition to effect of globalization, the culture of consumerism in Eaton centre constantly based on globalization (Moss, 2007). Without globalization, Easton Centre would lose its allure brought about by tourists. Four seasons centre for performing arts Hailed as one of the finest Opera houses in the world, the four seasons centre is the largest Opera Company in North America. With advanced allocation for ballet performances, the four seasons centre
The major groups that were directly affected are investors, employees, and suppliers. Here we should make the distinction between different types of investors. There are two major types of investors: insiders and outside investors. Insiders are the investors who know the information that is not known publicly and may benefit them in some way. Outside investors are the investors who only know publicly known information. In our case, outside investors was the group that lost the most. On the other hand, insiders, notably Mickey Monus and David Shapiro, were the one that gains millions on IPO. The group who suffered was employees of Phar-Mor. After the scandal was revealed, most of the stores were closed to cover up losses. As a result, thousands of employees got fired. Another party that was damaged by the scandal was Coopers&Lybrant, the firm that did the audit for Phar-Mor, lost its reputation as a firm who does an audit with integrity. The secondary effect of the scandal was the overall mistrust among investors. They thought that if a giant retailer can forge its accounting books, why smaller companies wouldn’t do the same. As a result, investors became reluctant in investing into businesses that caused harm to the economy as a whole. The last but not least group that was affected by the scandal is Phar-Mor’s suppliers. Mickey Monus was fiercely fighting with them to make the chipset deals to cover up his losses, sometimes using inappropriate pressure and causing suppliers making unprofitable deals. In additions, Monus forced them to pay fees and sponsor his basketball League using buyer power of his company. In addition, a lot of bills for supplies were unpaid for months by Phar-Mor. Some suppliers said that they hated doing business with Phar-Mor, but had no choice since it had an access to vast amount of customers.
Recently, these gadgets also acquired the CineForm codec, specifically the CineForm 444, into its cameras, enabling fasted HD and 3D editing faster without compromising the quality of the videos. The top products from the company are their camera lines, namely the GoPro HERO 35mm All Season Sports Camera, Digital HERO 3, Digital Both cameras use a 5 megapixel lens and has an exterior of clear polycarbonate HD Housing with glass lens. This is shockproof and waterproof up to 180 feet.
LucasArts are one of the leading publisher’s and developer of interactive entertainment software for the games industry. LucasArts has placed its main emphasis in their gaming development on that of the vital elements of film, compelling storytelling, painstaking character development and vivid settings. Their games have consistently focused on touching people’s emotions and have received critical acclaim from both players and critics alike numerous Game of the Year honours, including multiple awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (LucasArts official website).Much of their recent success has been on the franchising of the companies two major films, Indiana Jones and Star Wars.
According to Smithson, Walmart can expand its markets to new and emerging markets especially in the third world countries, which can significantly increase its revenues. Secondly, the company can reform is employment practices and improve the quality standard and in doing so, attract more customers and improve its brand image. On the other hand, the company faces threats such as the rising healthy lifestyle trend I that the company in most cases does not provide customers with healthy goods. At the same time, the company can capitalize on this aspect and increase its revenues. Aggressive competition from other discount retailers such as Target creates a great threat to the company (Smithson, 2015).
Chief Ethics Officers (CEOs) may not have been very popular around a decade ago, but the demand for such a position is beginning to grow within larger companies. From this point forward, when I mention CEOs in this paper, please understand that I am referring to Chief Ethics officers and not Chief Executive Officers. CEOs began appearing in corporate America around the same time as the inception of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for corporations. According to these guidelines, the companies who have instituted compliance and ethics programs within their institutions wouldn’t have received as severe a punishment as those without the programs in place[2].
Corporate financial and ethical misconduct is been documented in the media across many types of business and government over the years (Palmer, 2013; Wickham & O'Donohue, 2012). Most corporations have a Code of Ethics as a guideline for employees
The oversight responsibilities of the board, the CAE lacking of expertise or broad understanding of financial controls and responsibilities, and the understaffed internal audit functions lacking of independence and direct access to the board of directors contributed to the absence of internal controls. To begin with, the board should be retrained to achieve financial literacy to review financial reporting. Other than attending formal meetings, the board of directors should be more involved with the management. For the Audit Committee, the two members who were recruited as acquaintances to Brennahan need be replaced with experts who are more sufficiently knowledgeable about accounting rules beyond merely “financially literate”. Furthermore, the internal audit functions need to expand with different expertise commensurate with the expanded activities of the organization, testing financial reporting rather than internal controls from an operational perspective. The CAE should be more independent and proactive to execute audit plans, instead of following orders from the CFO, and initiate a direct and efficient communication between internal audit and audit
Solomon, J (2013). Corporate Governance and Accountability. 4th ed. Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. p.7, p9, p10, p15, p58, p60, p253.
... into picture. They will help us market and promote the product so well that we are sure of getting good responses even before the product reach the houses. They will use the best strategies to advertise the product so that people are completely aware about the product and are ready to use. They will ensure us of the best platform to launch and everything is in the budget that we as a company had chalked out. Our human resource department is handling the transportation and warehousing very well. They have the best 3rd party transportation company for their transportation by trucks. The warehouses are well built near the railway stations and have the most skilful of fork lifters and crane operators. We have the best labour that are capable of handling every good or bad situation very well, resulting in an accident free loading of our first ever launched energy drink.
The SWOT analysis is a useful tool for identifying our personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to our plans and goals. According to a “Fuel My Motivation” article (2010), this analysis considers internal influences that can positively or negatively affect our ability to achieve our goals. The internal factors are our strengths and weaknesses. Also considered are opportunities and threats, which are external influences that can have a positive or negative impact on the ability to achieve our goals. I will share how the self-assessment instruments and self-exercises in this course have contributed to assessing and understanding my strengths and weaknesses. I will also discuss techniques I will use to leverage my strengths and understand my weaknesses. In addition, I will consider opportunities that I can take advantage of and the threats that can possibly impede my progress.
Whistleblowing should be part of an ethics training which should include a message from the CEO or the owner of the business, that emphasize an ethical business practise, the code of ethics and decision making by including ethical consideration into strategic planning. By inducting an ethical business practise, the need for whistleblowers will not be needed, but there are always someone that cross the line. Therefore, by encouraging whistleblowing and supervise departmental and corporate performance concerning ethical questions.
The Tyco accounting scandal is an ideal illustration of how individuals who hold key positions in an organization are able to manipulate accounting practices and financial reports for personal gain. The few key individuals involved in the Tyco Scandal (CEO Kozlowski and CFO Swartz), used a number of clever and unique tactics in order to accomplish what they did; including spring loading, manipulating their ‘key-employee loan’ program, and multiple ‘hush money’ payouts.