Ethics Officer

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Ethics Officer

However, eliminating unethical behavior does not just stop in the education. Corporations must be governed throughout all their business transactions. The proposal is that all corporations that are publically traded and have shareholders must employ an ethics officer. The ethics officer will be immune from firings that are unjustified. They will not be part of an employment at-will doctrine (Cross & Miller, 2012). It is proposed that the ethics officer also be part of the corporation’s board of directors, and they have the ability to trump all decisions that are unethical. The ethics officer will not be paid by the corporation but part of their salary will come from the shareholders investments. Not only will they govern the corporation, but the ethics officer will be in charge of ensuring that training is provided to all staff on an annual basis, and whenever a new employee is hired they have to go through an ethics class provided by the ethics officer. Ethics in the work place will be the only job the officer holds.

The ethics officer’s sole duty is not to protect the corporation but to protect society, the shareholders and stakeholders from any unethical actions that could potentially hurt them. They will not be employed as an enemy of the corporation, but as a protector and advocate for the corporation through ensuring that the corporations is acting responsibly and ethically. If Enron and Arthur Anderson had ethics officers that were effective they would not have crashed as hard as they did. Both companies and the people who ran them will always have a bad name and will always be to blame for take many people’s retirements and saving all the while knowing they where cheating the numbers and knowing ...

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Ferrell, O., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2011). Business ethics (8th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage.

Gomstyn, A. (2010). Walmart CEO pay: More in an hour than workers get all year? Retrieved from, http://abcnews.go.com/Business/walmart-ceo-pay-hour-workers-year/story?id=11067470

Indiacsr. (2010). Concept of corporate social responsibility. Retrieved from, http://www.indiacsr.in/en/?p=113

PBS. (2002). Who dropped the ball? Retrieved from, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/regulation/watchdogs/

Serving History (2011). Enron: Early history. Retrieved from, http://www.servinghistory.com/topics/Enron::sub::Early_History

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