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Ethics in the corporate world
Ethics sarbanes and oxley act
Ethics in the corporate world
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Chief Ethics Officers
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].
Salary.com conducted a survey with the Ethics Officer Association (EOA) in August of 2005 that further brought to light the growing demand for CEOs. Over 109 of the largest companies in the world were part of this survey[4]. “Given the increasing importance being placed on corporate ethics and compliance, Salary.com's analysis of the survey has shown that top ethics executives are receiving salaries comparable to that of a Chief Information Officer and significant amounts of long-term incentives (non-qualified stock options, incentive stock options, and restricted stock).”[4]
Mostly due to the large scandals in the late 1990s and early 2000s, like the Enron epidemic, most larger companies want to avoid any disasters that might even duarf in comparison to what we have seen in the past. Another powerful driving force behind CEOs’ popularity was the inception of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, this act established new standards for corporate accountability in America. Requiring companies to not only make stronger commitments to ethical st...
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...fficers: Who Needs Them? Retrieved
February12, 2008 from http://www.forbes.com/2006/10/23/leadership-ethics-hp-lead-govern-cx_hc_1023ethics.html
[3] Roner, Lisa Ethics officers – Positions that need power? Retrieved February 15, 2008, from
http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=5411
[4] Salary.com. Salary.com and Ethics Officer Association Survey Validates Value of Ethics
and Compliance Officers' Roles in Today's Corporate World Retrieved February 18, 2008, from http://www.salary.com/aboutus/layoutscripts/abtl_default.asp?tab=abt&cat
=cat012&ser=ser041∂=Par474
[5] Vallario, C. W. Is Your Ethics Program Working? Retrieved February 12, 2008, from
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x57555.xml
Lewis, C. W., & Gilman, S. C. (2005). THE ETHICS CHALLENGE IN PUBLIC SERVICE A Problem-Solving Guide (2nd ed.).
Gomes and Grant are not the only two employees that have faced an ethical issue in the workplace, employees in numerous different organizations encounter similar dilemmas. However, they should all consider the consequences that will follow if they choose to act unethically. Rather, employees should possess and abide by a code of ethics so as not to potentially put their reputation and future in danger along with that of the organizations they work for.
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.
After news of the scandal of Enron, one of the hottest items on e-Bay was a 64-page copy of Enron’s corporate code of ethics. One seller/former employee proclaimed it had “never been opened.” In the forward Kenneth L. Lay, CEO of Enron stated, “We want to be proud of Enron and to know that it enjoys a reputation for fairness and honesty and that it is respected (Enron 2).” For a company with such an extensive code of ethics and a CEO who seemed to want the company to be respected for that, there are still so many unanswered questions of what exactly went wrong. I believe that simply having a solid and thorough code of ethics alone does not prevent a company from acting unethically when given the right opportunity.
Pfeiffer, R., & Forsberg, R. (2005). Ethics on the job: cases and strategies (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
LEADERSHIP BRIEFING PAPER Leadership Briefing Paper After spending your entire working life in one giant corporation that went down overnight; investing most of your retirement in stock options that plummet to zero; you are suddenly jobless and your retirement money is gone. Yet, perhaps even more threatening; our skilled and managerial jobs are steadily going abroad, due to poor corporate ethics. The crisis of poor ethics has jeopardized public trust, caused an erosion of organizational cultures, created human suffering, caused unemployment, and profit losses. Poor ethics
Trevino, Linda Klebe, Gary Weaver and David Gibs. "Managing Ethics and Legal Compliance: What Works and What Hurts." 1 January 1999. Harvard Business Review.org. California Management Review. Web. 9 November 2013. .
This paper will discuss the reasons why CEOs are not being overpaid. It will apply the utilitarian ethical principle to many a few aspects to CEO compensation and whether or not it is justifiable for such pay. The paper will look at whether or not their performance is justifiable for the pay because they play such a big role in the livelihood of the company along with the principle agency theory and how it is being addressed for the benefit of the shareholders and others involved with the company, the supply and demand of the CEOs, and the paper will describe the comparison of other professions to help link the idea of CEOs being fairly compensated.
It is clear in reviewing the FM case that the corporate executive’s personal morals were overrun by their desire to attain personal incentives and bonuses. Lack of internal controls allowed the executives to control what was reported to ensure the goal was attained. (Jennings, 2009) Retaining control and limiting devolution kept those below the executive ranks largely in the dark. The executive team used the corporate goals to manage behaviors from the top down, ignoring and or eliminating those who questioned their processes. (Marken, 2004) Reviewing the impact of how goals and incentives are communicated and calculated is a valuable lesson in understanding the balance between personal morals and attaining corporate goals. (Schultz & Wehmeier, 2010)
In order to answer the research question, I collected data to define and actualize the variables of interest. The first order of business was to collect data on the dependent variable, CEO total compensation. After selecting thirty-seven of the top Fortune 100 companies and identifying each company’s CEO, I was ready to begin collecting. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR system provided a perfect source for the best identification of each CEOs total compensation. Every company must provide an annual proxy statement, labeled DEF 14A, which contains a summary compensation table of the top five earners. In every company examined, the CEO happened to fall into that category, as expected. Total compensation includes salary, stock incentives, bonuses, and other compensation. To simplify the data, I converted CEO compensation in millions of dollars. Although the summary compensation tables include earnings from the last three years, I chose the total compensation paid to each CEO at the end of the 2015 fiscal year.
To provide an example of a breach of ethical conduct in the workplace, we may remember the case of a financial manager in a corporation that decided not to pay overtime to some employees. After a deep outside investigation, the company was summoned with thousands of dollars to remedy the payment that was supposed to be paid to all employees who worked more than forty hours per week. Again, it is needed more than just a booklet stating that the company adheres to the code of business ethics. It is needed serious managers that can run the company with the most seriousness as possible. Consequently, any written codes of business ethics, regardless of how well it has been crafted, need people that adhere to its internal content with a serious desire to do the right thing.
Since the beginning of time, there's been a over dweller, a monarch, a king, a CEO. A higher power has always been a factor in every corporation. CEOs are today's high archey in the business world; a chief executive officer is the highest rank in a company ultimately responsible for managerial decisions. Often given the highest salary you can imagine; a CEO receives their compensation from a variety of sources, such as their base salary, bonuses, benefits, and long term incentives (Walsh). Although legal statements of disclosure remain in dispute, the pay disparity between CEOs and employees has drawn significant attention from the media and has created numerous statistics and charts, such as, in his article The CEO Backlash,
These professionals need to know how unethical and ethical policy-making decisions differ in how it affects those ...
Ethics is the responsibility of each individual person, but starts with the CEO and the Board of Directors, setting the right tone at the top and moves down through the organization, including setting the tone in the middle. A company’s culture and ethic standards start at the top, not from the bottom. Employees will almost always behave in the manner that they think management expects them, and it is foolish for management to pretend otherwise (Scudder). One of the CEO’s most important jobs is to create, foster, and communicate the culture of the organization. Wrongdoings or improper behavior rarely occurs in a void, leaders typically know when someone is compromising the company
Kidder, R. M. (2003). How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living. New York, NY: Harper.