Recently Wells Fargo’s scandal of creating phony accounts has raised ethical concerns in the corporate world. Wells Fargo employees opened more than two million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts to meet sales projections. The company was charged with huge fines and earned a bad reputation that will take years to rebuild.
According to the Deontological perspective on ethics least some acts are morally obligatory. Under this approach, an action is considered morally bad because of some characteristic of the action itself, not just because the product of the action is bad. Wells Fargo unethical practices demonstrates unethical behavior, under deontological ethical theories as its employees duty to operate in an honest and fair fashion , in providing services to the public. Wells Fargo codes of conduct does not permit sales practices of these sort, therefore the employees who participated in these practices made unethical decisions. Unfortunately there was a wrong-doing on a massive scale. The acts of unethical behavior were conducted by both the employees and management. The management initially failed to publicly acknowledging the problem that raise concerns for the shortcoming of their inadequate controls to detect the fake
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Decisions taken within an organization are made by the leadership in light of the company’s culture, principles and policies. Leaders are the role models as they set the tone for the ethical stance of their individual followers, or the group they lead. As an ethical leader, they are expected to take responsibility and work to correct mistakes. They must ensure the company has an effective internal controls in place to identify unethical practices. In my opinion, big companies in their audit and compliance committees should have members who may act as ethicist to assess whether the actions of the company are consistent with the desired ethical
In the article Wells Fargo’s Reaction to Scandal Fails to Satisfy Angry Lawmakers it mentions how lower-level employees were mainly affected by this unethical behavior and that more than 5,300 employees had been fired due to the unethical practice. Some employees were fired that did not participate in the unethical practice during the scandal were affected as well as a result of not being able to attain the sale goals. Stated in the article, How The Wells Fargo Phony Account Scandal Sunk John Stumpf, “Two former employees filed a $2.6 billion class action suit, alleging branch workers were unfairly fired when they could not meet Wells' aggressive sales quotas.” Customers also suffered because they trusted this bank and its employees to do their job right and they were taken advantage of.
Relevant Facts: Nurofen, the pain-relief medication is made by Reckitt Benckiser Australia, a multinational company. The company was found misleading customers for all its specific range that contained the same active ingredient ibuprofen lysine 342mg and was seen to have same effect. The product was advertised the products as been targeting back pain, period pain and tension headaches. The Company was fined $1.7m for misleading customers on range of ‘specific pain’ relief contravening Australian Consumer Law has been brought forward by ACCC. The ACCC had asked federal court to impose $6 million fine.
Ethical issues should be seen in the organization and they must bring a change when they have discovered that it is not moving as per the rules of the ethical standards, so that the employees have a chance to present their views to solve the issue collectively with their own views and ideas. Independent social auditing which is conducted by an external party regularly or without prior announcement should have been a boon in the case of Lehman Brothers. The audit result which was taken by the external auditors must be exposed to the public square, for further scrutiny so that the public can come to know the performance of the whole organisation without any doubts. This would have showed the effort lessens the opportunity for retaliation from those being audited which was the company’s own board where they manipulated according to their own wants and desires which in the end resulted in the decline of the one of the top listed company in wall street ‘Lehman
Introduction One thing that has aroused my curiosity when I saw the logo of Wells Fargo, it is the western movies image that many non-Americans associated with the U.S.A. this logo (stagecoach) for a bank is unusual and as ex-bank employee, I try to learn more in order to compare. What I learned arouse my wish to work upon my graduation and why not you? Its welcome, I quote “Regardless of our growing size, scope, and reach, we must never lose sight of putting our customers first and helping them succeed financially.” (Wells Fargo & Company) summarize my interest for this company. For a financial entity of this size, you must know the history of Wells Fargo, you must know values and culture of Wells Fargo, and you must know the strategy and goals of Wells Fargo.
The Wells Fargo Fake Accounts Scandal: Implications for Business Environment and Financial Scandals Your Name Department of ABC, University of ABC – Whitewater ABC 101: Course Name Professor (or Dr.) Firstname Lastname Date Introduction Financial scandals have long-lasting effects on both individuals and the broader economy. This research paper explores the Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal as a recent example of a financial scandal and examines its implications within the current business environment. The paper also highlights the significance of financial scandals and the need for stringent regulations and oversight to prevent fraudulent activities.
Guidelines: Make an ethical guideline to help employees in the company that know the positive and negative of company’s activities. This will help limit unethical behavior by increasing awareness. 2. Ethics officers: The company can hire an ethical officer to ensure the company pay sufficient attention to the ethical ramifications.
When we hear of the apparel retailer, Lululemon, we usually think of really overpriced athletic clothing. Lululemon is a luxurious brand for those who want to invest in high quality athletic clothing. This retail company was originally founded in Vancouver, Canada in 1998. In addition, the founder of the company is Denis “Chip” Wilson, who is no longer affiliated with the incorporation due to his unprofessionalism. Over the past twenty years, Lululemon has faced a couple ethical issues, but their ethical culture has also impacted their relationship with customers and employees.
As employees faced pressure to reach quotas, they found ways to cheat the system. If a customer came in to open an account, the employee would simply make it two or three. The intense pressure placed on employees created an environment that not only rewarded dishonesty and malpractice, but made it necessary to maintain employment. Many employees attempted to report these illegal practices to the Wells Fargo ethics line, but action was never taken and the problem escalated.
1. Introduction – ethics – what are they? Ethics (or moral philosophy) is the kind of philosophy that define concept of right or wrong conduct. In practice, ethics try to resolve questions of human morality, by explaining concepts of good and evil. Ethics, culture, morals – are bind together, they are embedded.
early stages of the scandal, the San Francisco based financial institution was investigated by the local Los Angeles City’s Attorney and California state officials. Preliminary investigations revealed the extent of the fraud and malpractice predated as far back as 2011. As a result, on September 8, 2016, federal investigators followed suit and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Agency opened an investigation against Wells Fargo and handed a $185 million penalty to settle the dispute. This settlement would become the largest fine levied in the agency’s history. Of the $185 million, $100 million comprised of fines from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), $50 million originated from the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, and
(Johnson , 2014 ) In this case , it shows that under normal circumstances the management level of a company or corporation will choose to hide the truth over honesty and integrity .In other way , profitability has override the important of ethics in the corporation .
As a result, the corporate players, practitioners, and scholars in the ethical field have helped to shape, and communicate ethical behavior at the work place (Terris, 2005, p.48). Mechanisms such as punishment and reward systems have been historically used to inspire ethical behavior, and acceptable group behavior norms amongst employees at the work place (Mayer et al., 2012). In the event that unethical behaviors become part of an organization’s group norms, a successive sequence of ethical problems is likely to follow. This arises from the fact that employees in the organization will lack insightful directive from their leaders, and therefore pursue the unethical behavior without fear of reprimand. Importantly, the organization has to continually consider coming up with long-term ethical solutions to such oversights to keep employees from engaging in unethical
This statement is supported by Bennett (2014) wherein ethics clearly defines what is the right and wrong things and shapes what kind of behavior the business should act on. For the sense of business according to Joseph (2013), ethics are constructed and decided by each business and underpins decision that an employee makes. When it comes to the business’ environment, a well-constructed ethics is a key for a considerate and responsible decision making in a business (Bennett, 2014). Business Ethics is very important inside the company, it will show the moral standards that a company or business have whether it is right or wrong and good or bad.
Review of Literature Unethical behavior can tarnish a company’s image and reputation. If a company is unethical, they may have to spend additional money to improve their public image, as well as gain back as many customers as possible. The reason I have chosen to use articles that are quite a few years old and that are not so recent is because I feel that they are very good examples of what I am trying to prove in the terms of ethical behaviour within companies and these specific articles relate well to my chosen topic.
The earlier opinion stated that a business cannot be ethical, but this opinion is not used anymore in the modern business. Today business has belief that they must be responsible for social since they live and operate within a social structure. The key factors that make business ethics is important at the quarter of the 20th century are corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, and globalized economy. The culture of an organization, or else we can call it as the philosophy of an organization which is related with ethics have a great relationship with the performance of a business in long and short term. As a business is manage by human being, the people who manage a business