The Oxford dictionary states that fraud is the “wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain” (Oxford University Press, 2014). It is arguable that only individuals have the ability to engage in fraud, but these individuals may lead corporations, which allows corporations also to commit acts of fraud. From a high-level perspective for combating this issue, many governments build a regulatory environment that interacts through firms and individuals. This regulatory environment exists as a series of laws and directives on the various government entities interact to ensure this protection. These laws and directives protect the public from fraud. This coverage of the regulatory environment even protects the public from fraud that happens within a corporation. Laws, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002 give protection against internal fraud. Understanding the effects of regulation on ethical behavior, and understanding the regulatory environment, ensures that one possesses a basic understanding of how the regulatory environment protects the public.
Effects of Regulations on Ethical Behavior
What is Ethical Behavior
"Ethics refers to the well-founded standard of right and wrong that prescribed what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues” (Velasquez, Andre, Shanks, S.J., & Meyer, 2010, para. 9). A working definition of behavior is the cognitive or physical actions of the individual. Combining ethics with behavior creates ethical behavior that has the working definition of the actions that one should take in light of a standard agreement of what the group defines as right or wrong.
Understanding the Effects on Ethical...
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...ntegrity, and Facilitates Capital Formation. Retrieved from SEC.gov: http://www.sec.gov/about/whatwedo.shtml#.UySuOPldXYE
Shleifer, A. (414). Does Competition Destroy Ethical Behavior? The American Economic Review, 414-418.
SOX-Online. (2003-2012). Section 201 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Retrieved from SOX-Online: http://www.sox-online.com/act_section_201.html
Taylor, D. (2005). What Sarbanes Oxley and Why Does It Change Everything? Retrieved from Ask Dave Taylor.com: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/what_is_sarbanes_oxley_and_why_does_it_change_everything/
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 . (n.d.). Retrieved from Security and Exchange Commission: https://www.sec.gov/about/laws/soa2002.pdf
Velasquez, M., Andre, C., Shanks, T., S.J., & Meyer, M. J. (2010). What is Ethics? Retrieved from Santa Clara University: https://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/whatisethics.html
The. Vaughn, Lewis. A. Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues, 3rd Edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013.
A possible flaw of Sarbanes-Oxley is it failed to put up any resistance in thwarting the financial crisis. While the degree to which fraudulent behavior can be traced to the roots of the Great Panic of 2007 will likely be up for eternal debate, it might be telling that Sarbanes-Oxley effectively did nothing. It seems this could indicate that stronger incentives for whistleblowers (such as Dodd-Frank and perhaps other whistleblower protection regimes) are very necessary given the extreme social costs. This conclusion may be hasty, however, given the short time period between the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley and the crash. Not only is the status of Sarbanes-Oxley still in flux over a decade later, but one has to consider the substantial learning and switching costs associated with a regime with such a substantial ruach. Certainly, this is not to say that additional protections may in fact be necessary given the putative reluctance of lawyers to report fraud, but Sarbanes-Oxley likely needed more time to really crystalize and provide some level of predictability before it can be declared a bust.
Ethics is defined by as the “branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions
Throughout the past several years major corporate scandals have rocked the economy and hurt investor confidence. The largest bankruptcies in history have resulted from greedy executives that “cook the books” to gain the numbers they want. These scandals typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of assets or underreporting of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations (Medura 1-3). In response to the increasing number of scandals the US government amended the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 to mitigate these problems. Sarbanes Oxley has extensive regulations that hold the CEO and top executives responsible for the numbers they report but problems still occur. To ensure proper accounting standards have been used Sarbanes Oxley also requires that public companies be audited by accounting firms (Livingstone). The problem is that the accounting firms are also public companies that also have to look after their bottom line while still remaining objective with the corporations they audit. When an accounting firm is hired the company that hired them has the power in the relationship. When the company has the power they can bully the firm into doing what they tell them to do. The accounting firm then loses its objectivity and independence making their job ineffective and not accomplishing their goal of honest accounting (Gerard). Their have been 379 convictions of fraud to date, and 3 to 6 new cases opening per month. The problem has clearly not been solved (Ulinski).
Thiroux, J. P., & Krasemann, K. W. (2009). Ethics: Theory and practice (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Barry, Vincent, Olen, Jeffrey, & Van Camp, Julie C. Applying Ethics: A Text with Readings, Tenth Edition. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011.
Weston, Anthony. A Practical Companion to Ethics. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Ethics are moral principles that can be used to help guide peoples decisions. We are all different and therefore our beliefs and opinions differ. There are many ethical theories, and according to Panza and Potthast (n.d.) the following are some that are widely used. Virtue ethics is one theory which states that personality is the most important thing. Living an ethical life, acting right, requires that one develops and demonstrates the quality of courage, compassion, wisdom, and temperance. It also requires that greed, jealousy, and selfishness is avoided. Utilitarianism states that the amount of happiness and suffering created by a person’s actions is what matters the most. As a result, acting rightly includes maximizing the amount of happiness and minimizing the amount of suffering around you. At times you may need to break some of the traditional moral rules to achieve such an outcome. Kantianism is another theory which highlights the principles behind actions rather than an actions results. It states that it requires to be motivated by good principles that treats everyone with respect. If you’re motivated by good principles, you overcome your animal instinct and act ethically. Another ethical theory is the Contract theory, which suggest that ethics should be thought of as terms of agreements between people. It suggests that doing the right thing means obeying agreements set by members rather than those of society. For this theory ethics isn’t necessarily about character, consequences, or principles. The last theory I’m going to mention is Care ethics. Care ethics focuses on ethical attention on relationships before other factors. As a result, acting rightly involves building, strengthening, and maintaining strong relationship...
Velasquez, Manuel, Claire Andre, S.J., Thomas Shanks, and Michael J. Meyer. "What Is Ethics?" What Is Ethics? N.p., 2010. Web. 27 Nov. 2013.
[1] Ethics is defined as “the code of moral principles and values that governs the behaviour of a person or a group with respect to what is right or wrong” (Samson and Daft, 2005, p.158)
Ethics are the set beliefs and values of an individual which they apply to circumstances relating to morality. To act in an ‘ethical’ manner, an individual must display integrity by doing what they believe to be right.
The dictionary defines ethics as rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good
When asked what is the definition of ethics, many responded that being moral meant doing the right thing. But how can we justify what is a good action and what is a bad action? All humans were created equal, but our principles, and ways of thinking can be extremely different. Some may say doing the right thing means following your heart, your inner feelings and intuition. But emotions can be misleading. Others say in order to do what is the morally right thing means to follow the law and do what is right by society, to be accepted. But today’s society is judgmental and can be corrupted with numerous opinions due to the diversity of cultures. So what does it mean to be ethical? Being ethical means doing what is right in terms of virtues, fairness, duties, responsibilities, obligations, and moral believes all which derived from cultures and family backgrounds.
Ethics is all about the right or wrong behavior in appropriate circumstances. It depends on certain assumption, such the right behavior of self-rule and the right behavior to life. Ethics are divided into two:
...the concept of what should we do or what we ought to do. Ethics is design to help one receive the life they want and live it with purpose. In certain situations it’s unclear as to consider it moral or immoral as ethics comes to play alongside morality. Some would argue the concept of what can be define as moral as immoral in conjunction with ethics by means of feelings, religion, law, culture, and science. Although they prove good standings they cannot be accounted for as those rationales are more so that of opinion that are altered daily depending of that of the individual. For this reason any act can be considered moral as we can use descriptive education depicting that of ethics, in which we live a life seeking how things should be and that it depends on the individual. So who is to say what’s right and what’s wrong. If it exists in the universe it can be moral.