A company's code of ethics is very important to establishing the expectations and quality of its brand. The code of ethics are concrete expectations for employee behavior, accountability and communicates the ethical policy of a company to its partners and clients. A good business practice is to have sound ethics. Having good ethical practice is knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing what the right thing is. Though good ethical behavior is something that should be done automatically, a company needs to have a set of rules in place that holds everyone accountable. Over the last twenty years, the country has been bombarded with company scandals and unethical behavior; though morally wrong, the punishment does not fit the crime. The punishments have been overkill. A murderer, rapist, or child molester commits violent crimes and potentially is out of jail in 10 - 20 years. The CEO’s that commit white collar crime receive 25 years to life; this paper will discuss how this punishment for committing nonviolent crimes, such as breaching a company’s code of ethics, are disproportionate to violent crimes that plague the country today. White Collar Penalties are Too Harsh for the Crimes In the aftermath of Enron, Washington Mutual Bank, TYCO, and World Comm these companies went against the grain of what good ethical behavior is and what their respective company’s code of ethics were. The criminal justice system has made it clear that it will not allow companies and their executives to get away with the misuse of public trust by allowing them to make themselves rich at the expense of the employee. Where these crimes are both ethically and morally wrong, the CEO’s of major corporations are being punished by a ... ... middle of paper ... ...the non-violent offender should be afforded the same opportunity. References .(2007, March 8). Retrieved from Yahoo voices: http://voices.yahoo.com/worldcom-scandal-look-back-one-biggest-225686.html?cat=3 Dash, E. (2008). $5 Billion Said to Be Near for WaMu. New York: The New york Times. Haag, E. V. (1982). Commenting on Challegeing just Desserts: Punishing White Collar Criminals. journal of ciminolgy and law, 764. Harrison, K. (2010). Dangerous offenders, indeterminate sentencing, and the rehabilitation revolution. Journal Of Social Welfare & Family Law , 423-432. Mclean, B., & Elkind, P. (2003). The smartest guys in the room. New York: Portfolio . Podgor, E. S. (2007). The challenge of white collar sentencing. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Weissmann, A. B. (2007). White-collar defendants and white-collar crimes. The Yale Law Journal Pocket Part.
1. According to Reiman, why does the criminal justice system favor upper-class criminals? What does Reimer say about the notion that white-collar crime is harmless?
Professor and Director of the Distance Learning Masters Program at The University of Cincinnati, Michael L. Benson has his Ph. D. in Sociology and is the author of "Denying the Guilty Mind: Accounting for Involvement in White-Collar Crime." In a classic study based on interviews with 30 convicted white-collar offenders all men, Benson examines the excuses and justifications used by White-Collar criminals to not only explain their involvement in the crime but also claim their innocence. It focuses mainly on the techniques that are used to deny they did anything wrong in categories separated by antitrust violators, tax violators, violations of financial trust and those committing fraud. Antitrust Violators focused on the everyday character and historical continuity of their offenses. They claimed to be following es...
It's difficult not to be cynical about how “big business” treats the subject of ethics in today's world. In many corporations, where the only important value is the bottom line, most executives merely give lip service to living and operating their corporations ethically.
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Shover, N, & Hochstetler, A. (2006). Choosing white-collar crime. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Schanzenbach, Max; Yaeger, Michael L., (2006). Prison time, fines, and federal white-collar criminals: The anatomy of a racial disparity. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 96(2), p757-793. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
White-collar crime is the financially motivated illegal acts that are committed by the middle and upper class through their legitimate business or government activities. This form of crime was first coined by Edwin Sutherland in 1939 as “a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” (Linden, 2016). Crime has often been associated with the lower class due to economic reasons. However, Sutherland stressed that the Criminal Justice System needed to acknowledge illegal business activity as crime due to the repercussions they caused and the damage they can cause to society (Linden, 2016). Crime was prevalently thought to only be
Many organizations have been destroyed or heavily damaged financially and took a hit in terms of reputation, for example, Enron. The word Ethics is derived from a Greek word called Ethos, meaning “The character or values particular to a specific person, people, culture or movement” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2007, p. 295). Ethics has always played and will continue to play a huge role within the corporate world. Ethics is one of the important topics that are debated at lengths without reaching a conclusion, since there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s basically depends on how each individual perceives a particular situation. Over the past few years we have seen very poor unethical business practices by companies like Enron, which has affected many stakeholders. Poor unethical practices affect the society in many ways; employees lose their job, investors lose their money, and the country’s economy gets affected. This leads to people start losing confidence in the economy and the organizations that are being run by the so-called “educated” top executives that had one goal in their minds, personal gain. When Enron entered the scene in the mid-1980s, it was little more than a stodgy energy distribution system. Ten years later, it was a multi-billion dollar corporation, considered the poster child of the “new economy” for its willingness to use technology and the Internet in managing energy. Fifteen years later, the company is filing for bankruptcy on the heels of a massive financial collapse, likely the largest in corporate America’s history. As this paper is being written, the scope of Enron collapse is still being researched, poked and prodded. It will take years to determine what, exactly; the impact of the demise of this energy giant will be both on the industry and the
Perri, J.D., CFE, CPA, F. (2011, January/February). White-collar crime punishment too much or not enough?. FRAUDMAGAZINE, Retrieved from http://www.all-about-forensic-science.com/support-files/white-collar-crime-punishment.pdf
I discovered how sticking to one’s morals should be the topmost priority for everyone involved in business, whether personal or professional. Regardless of what the consequences may be, the intensity of the problem, and the complexities it may bring, sacrificing one’s integrity should never be an option, as integrity goes hand-in-hand with the morals of an individual (Duggan & Woodhouse, 2011). They further go on to say that having individuals take part in building a code of ethics that supports employee integrity, they will act ethically. Also, I believe that companies should place more emphasis on the moral behavior of their employees, and clear-cut policies should be set regarding such ethical situations. Furthermore, I realized how serving justice while making decisions really helps in the long run, and that opting to go for the ideal rather than they deserved is not always the best option, and could hurt a company in more than one
Crime comes in different ways, shapes, and forms. From corruption to murder, the seriousness and blameworthiness varies from crime to crime. The most common factor of all crime is that it is illegal. The problem with prosecution is that some crimes can find loopholes around the rigidity of the laws created. This is the hardest for white collar crimes. With so many types of white collar crimes, it is hard to understand where it belongs on the scale on seriousness and blameworthiness and how to prosecute. With white collar crimes, they are most commonly seen as “victimless” or “paper” crimes, since they do not involve physical harm to the people included. With so many types available to analyze, the purpose of this paper is to focus on bribery, perjury, and fraud. When it comes to white collar crimes, or any crime for that matter, we do not only need to focus on what causes it and society’s reaction to it. We need to look into prevention of it and being able to stop it before it even starts.
Tyco provides products and services across the world. The company is global and diversified providing a variety of products including electronics, healthcare, fire and security services and engineered products and services. While employing over 250,000 people worldwide they grossed approximately $40 billion in revenue in the year 2005. In 2002 Tyco was involved with the corporate scandal where the management mis-appropriated corporation funds. The previous CEO Dennis Kozlowski was convicted in 2005 on 22 counts of the 23 that he was charged with. This is an example of not only a legal issue of responsibility but also one of an ethical issue that the Tyco Corporation has had to face. In the face of the legal and ethical issues that this mishap had placed the corporation in, Tyco placed Ed Breen in as chairman and CEO. Mr. Breen joined the company in 2002 after the scandal and immediately began the rebuild of the company’s name. With the appointment of Ed Breen and his changing of the company’s ethical standards (to be discussed in the next portion of the paper) he promotes the legal responsibilities of not only the company’s employees but the responsibilities of the suppliers and buyers to report any wrong doing. This reporting also speaks to the ethics of the Tyco corporation employees as well as those of the companies th...
The term “ethical business” is seen, by many people, as an oxymoron. This is because a business’s main objective is to make as much money as possible. Making the most money possible, however, can often lead to unethical actions. Companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Satyam have been the posterchildren for how corporations’ greed lead to unethical practices. In recent times however, companies have been accused of being unethical based on, not how they manage their finances, but on how they treat the society that they operate in. People have started to realize that the damage companies have been doing to the world around them is more impactful and far worse than any financial fraud that these companies might be engaging in. Events like the BP oil
Apel, R, & Paternoster, R 2009, ‘Understanding “criminogenic” corporate culture: What white-collar crime researchers can learn from studies of the adolescent employment-crime relationship. The Criminology of White-Collar Crime, vol.1 no. 1, pp. 15-33.