Those responsible for the stewardship of HIH ignored the warning signs at their own, the group’s and the public’s peril. There was a lack of sceptical questioning and analysis when and where it mattered.
MONITORING & PERFORMANCE REVIEWS
There was no clear framework from which HIH’s performance could be judged. In monitoring performance, the board of HIH needed to measure management proposals by reference to endorsed strategy, with any deviation in practice being understood and challenged. The directors also had a responsibility to ensure that management proposals were being followed through. HIH 's UK operations were the subject of constant regular internal audit reports for some time. However, little was done to ensure that the proposals
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Financial risks are evident in HIH’s approach to corporate social responsibility. An ethical organisation contribute to all stakeholder’s wellbeing, with positive outcomes for its shareholders; reducing operational risk, increasing profits, leading to less disruption, fraud reduction, litigation avoidance, brand preservation, and mitigation of legal compliance penalties. Justice Owen noted that effective corporate governance should have “appropriate checks and balances in place to minimise both the risk and its effect. (Owen, 2003, p.78). Risk management was deficient with risks not being properly identified and …show more content…
The negative cash flow aspects of this venture hastened the rate of HIH’s decline and led directly to the company’s liquidation.
CONTRAVENTION OF THE LAW
Justice Owen found that specific incidents might have been a contravention of the law. The HIH Royal Commission had cited 56 possible breaches of the Corporations Act or the Crimes Act, split equally between civil and criminal offences, and recommended that the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Australian Securities and Investments Commission consider laying charges.
MORALITY, ETHICS & INTEGRITY
Those who participate in the direction and management of public companies, as well as their professional advisers, need to identify and examine what they regard as the basic moral underpinning of their system of values. They must then apply those tenets in the decision-making
...imited – FAI was implementing detrimental provisioning practices, including among others failure to monitor claims lower than $100,000 and lack of clear methodology on how claims estimates were monitored. These reports were made in 1997, a year before HIH announced its proposed takeover of FAI in September of 1998.
Nosocomial or healthcare-associated infection (HAI) occurs when a patient receiving treatment in a health care setting develops an infection secondary to their original condition. These infections are serious and costly adverse outcomes of medical care that affect nearly two million people in the United States annually and lead to substantial morbidity and mortality. With increased days of hospitalization and direct medical costs, HAIs account for an estimated $20 billion per year in national health care expenditure every year. As such, they present one of the major threats to patient safety and remain a critical challenge to public health. On any given day, approximately [one in 25 patients] contracts at least one infection while receiving
The organization wants to perform at its best, but the toolkits it uses lack instruction regarding the implementation of Standards of Excellence and Elements of Success. I recommend that the organization rewrite the toolkit so that anyone who uses it knows what is expected at HBI and what it values. This will take time and experience because it is not easy to identify what is expected and how that should be used in your daily routine.
To supply the wants and needs of a consumer, society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise.” (Santayana, George. Is The Tyranny Of Shareholder Value Finally Ending? So before we go into greater detail on the different perspectives related to social responsibility, one might question the meaning of social responsibility. It is generally agreed that social responsibility is defined as the business obligation to make decisions that benefit society.... ...
Introduction The aim of this paper is to discuss the challenges of values-based decision-making ethics in the current marketplace. This discussion will include the research findings on the four markets for potential expansion and an assessment of the current social and political climate of each. A recommendation will offer three best fits based on a comparison of company values, and will include a detailed rationale for these choices. Content and Analysis Background According to Ferrell (2004), “Organizations create ethical or unethical corporate cultures based on leadership and the commitment to values that stress the importance of stakeholder relationships.
This paper is an analysis of the ethical business decision matrix developed by The George S. May Company (May), a management-consulting firm. The paper will also compare how these guidelines were used by John D. Beckett (Beckett) in his company and how the author’s firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLC (PwC), uses them. The guidelines are meant to be used by employees. These guidelines are specifically a measure of moral and ethical principles tied to business ethics in acceptability of right and wrong behaviour in the workplace.
For a company to be successful ethically, it must go beyond the notion of simple legal compliance and adopt a values-based organizational culture. A corporate code of ethics can be a very valuable and integral part of a company’s culture but I believe that it is not strong enough to stand alone. Thought and care must go into constructing the code of ethics and the implementation of it. Companies need to infuse ethics and integrity throughout their corporate culture as well as into their definition of success. To be successfully ethical, companies must go beyond the notion of simple legal compliance and adopt a values-based organizational culture.
Shum, P. K., & Yam, S. L. 2011. Ethics and law: Guiding the invisible hand to correct corporate social responsibility externalities. Journal of Business Ethics, 98, 549-571.
Its main role is to protect the public through the regulation of its registrants as well as “developing a sustainable organisation that minimises the negative impacts and maximises the positive.” These negative impacts are kept to a minimum by a series of different standards being set. Each registrant within the HCPC must meet these standards to avoid investigation.
...d rules that are managed and reinforced can make a difference in the organization. Senior leaders must be aware of the influential impact that immediate leaders play in the daily duties of the workplace. Then the immediate leaders can emphasize and support the ethical character of their workers. Civility demands that a person must be self-disciplined for the sake of others. “By putting ethics into practice in our day-to-day encounters, civility is that moral glue without which our society would come apart” (Brannigan, 2008, para. 13). It is more important than ever for companies to act responsibly, as customers are buying products and services from the companies that they trust. Ethical values can be incorporated into an organization’s culture. Ethics plays an important role in the company and can have beneficial and profitable results on the corporation.
Ethics in business is a highly important concept, as it can affect a company’s profits, salaries paid to employees and CEOs, and public opinion, among many other aspects of a business. Ethics can be enforced by company policies and guidelines, set a precedent when a company is faced with an important decision, and are also evolving thanks to new technology and situations that arise due to technology usage. Businesses have a duty to maintain their ethical responsibilities and also to help their employees enforce these responsibilities in and out of the workplace. However, ethics and the foundation for them are not always black and white. There are many different ethical theories, however Utilitarianism, Kant’s Deontological ethics, and Virtue ethics are three of the most well known theories in existence. Each theory is distinct in that it has a different quality used to determine ethicality and allows for a person to choose which system of ethics works best with both the situation and his or her personal ethical preferences.
Friedman (1970) is very clear on the line between individual ethics and business. An individual acts in his own right based upon his personal morality code. He takes on responsibilities unique to him in a singular fashion such as marriage. A business, however, is a collective of reasoning from group thought defined by social convention. It is soulless as societal pressures dictate the ethical code. Individual responsibilities however, are self-assign because he adopts his own code of ethics and consequences. When the individual is working as an executive, he is required to balance the needs of the stockholders and the owners of the business all the while producing profit. His individual ethical leanings, either consensual or conflicted, are su...
Ethics is concerned with the study of morality and the application of reason to elucidate specific rules and principles that determine right and wrong for a given situation (Crane & Matten, 2010). Since law does not necessarily cover the morality of many controversial issues, moral reflection ought to be performed on any action, regardless of its lawfulness. The growing power of business in today’s society has enabled businesses to significantly impact the world. Hence, business ethics is highly relevant as it could determine whether businesses contribute or cause harm to the society at large.
In the business world there are many fundamental aspects and situations that can lead to several issues. In order to find an optimal and professional solution, business decision makers need to apply moral and ethical standards. And it is at that moment in which business ethics perform its role. Business ethics, which is in charge of examine how companies and individuals should act in business situations, is very essential in order to reach a common agreement and to work within the laws of business and solve an arisen dilemma. Working of the hand of ethical business companies, employees, investors, directors, and even individual officers can be beneficiated and obtain most favorable outcomes.
It seems obvious that large corporations have a tendency to ignore the negative effects of their actions in favor of profit. This example, although sensationalized, still says to me that with power comes responsibility. It affirmed my belief that a corporation’s goal cannot be just to provide profit to shareholders, but there must also be an element of social responsibility.