Bernie Ebbers, the former chief executive officer of WorldCom, was a Charismatic leader according to the characteristics he has demonstrated in his leadership such as strong vision to grow the company into a worldwide telecommunication giant, willingness to take personal risks to achieve that vision and displayed extraordinary behaviors like relentless cost cutting tales (Robbins & Judge, 2015). Ebbers’s being named as “one of Network World’s 25 most powerful people in the telecommunications industry”, the key staff members description of him as a charismatic leader who inspired extraordinary levels of personal loyalty and high employee performance and Murray Waldron, one of Ebbers’s original partners, description of him as “the most focused leader I’d ever seen.” are indicative of his leadership. According to the case, Ebbers violated laws and ethical boundaries to inflate stock price by filing false financial statements, involved in security frauds, accused of falsifying six regulatory filings, offered $80,000 to $300,000 loans to as many as 50 top executives not put in writing. …show more content…
The company growth strategy was based on the use of the company stock for new acquisitions, as a result the company officials found it extremely important to meet Wall Street’s expectations of what the company earnings should be. Charismatic leaders can be self-centered and manipulative in the means they use to achieve their goals (Parry & Proctor-Thomson, 2002). Ebbers used this situation to create a culture that gave birth to the
Jack Welch created wealth while managing GE, in the 1980s he started to notice the necessities of the company. I do not believe this job could have been done any better, Mr. Welch noticed that competition was on the rise as well as outsourcing. The wages in America started to rise and he predicted that GE would not be able to keep growing and continue making profit how he envisioned it would so he started to implement his plan. He started buying well developed business and sold off the parts of those business that would not make huge profit or were not number one or two in their specific market. 2.)
Enron Analysis Enron is a great play which presents a dry story about business in a colorful and cartoonish way and impressed me with a variety of elements, including video, music, choreography, and dance. This is a play depicts the spectacular collapse of a Texan energy giant-Enron. As an audience, I witnessed how a business empire was built on shadows, accruing debts of 38 billion dollars and finally going bust in this two hours and thirty minutes play. In the following passage, I will describe, analyze, and interpret this play both about its script, including characters and plots, and its production, such as the videos, stage props and customs.
The power of persuasion is one that has proved its influence all throughout the history of humanity, convincing the masses to think as one body. This talent is not without practice or order however, even those talented with influence must be organized and eloquently sew their words together to prove a point. Only arguments that can appeal to all are able to be successful. In President John F. Kennedy’s Speech “Peace Speech”, examples of Aristotle's Modes of Persuasion are used. Kennedy uses the appeal of his credibility (Ethos), emotion (Pathos), and logic (Logos) to support his argument against war.
This historical study will define the moral leadership of Abraham Lincoln’s role as president during the Civil War. Lincoln’s role as an anti-Slavery supported in the north provided the necessary moral leadership to sustain a complex war involving the continued argument about the continued existence of the institution of slavery. In this context, Lincoln had not previously been a supporter of the northern abolitionist movements before becoming president, yet throughout the Civil War, he incrementally began to realize the political and moral implications of slavery as a dire threat to American freedoms. Lincoln’s opposition to slavery during his presidency defined a major change in U.S. history, which galvanized the North to challenge the dominance of pro-slavery in the South. This commitment to ending slavery formed the foundation of Lincoln’s role as a liberator of African-American slaves as a defining factor of the war.
ASSIGNMENT#1 Case Study: Stone Finch, Inc. Assessment of Jim Billings’ performance as president of Stone Finch: Jim Billings’ energy, capacity to take risks, build a culture of experimentation and make a team of falcons made him appropriate for the position of President of Stone Finch. His growth and success was quick and remarkable as he moved rapidly from the research group to corporate planning to plant management. He was recognized as high-potential leader throughout the company and he was given responsibility to head R&D and invest capital in it. Due to Billings’ capabilities Richard Stone decided to acquire Goldfinch.
By doing so he wanted to have more control therefore the type of hierarchy culture is also applied to J.C. Penney under his leadership (Kreitner, 2013,
There is a broad line between a captain of industry and a robber baron. A captain of industry brought an advanced, modern economy. They might have done a few shady acts, but people can look past it. A robber baron can be considered as thieves because of the way they gained money by destroying other companies. Many could say these millionaires are both.
Eileen Foster was the Executive Vice President of Fraud Risk Management at Countrywide, and later served in the role of Senior Vice President of the Mortgage Fraud Investigation Division at Bank of America after the two companies merged (Foster, n.d.). It was her responsibility to investigate mortgage origination fraud and reporting suspicious activity to regulators and the company’s Board of Directors. After several years of seeing a lot of suspicious activity and blatant acts of fraud she found that the company was playing party to this activity. Any employee who reported fraud and wrongdoing to Employee Relations were being transferred, demoted, harassed or terminated. When Foster reported her concerns to Countrywide’s Internal audit to investigate, the company not only chose to conceal her allegations from Bank of America, but it also directed employee relations to investigate Foster for wrong doing.
The leadership behaviors at CVS reflects the aforementioned leadership philosophy. In an interview with leaders at CVS headed by Merlo motivates their employees to accomplish more than what is usually expected of them. According to Northouse (2013), the transformational leader plays a vital role in initiating change, where followers and leaders are inextricably bound together in the transformation process (Northouse, 2013). In the case of CVS, this is clearly evident by what Scott Baker, CVS Senior Vice President has to say : “nobody works in solos, we collaborate on concepts and ideas with the goal of providing our customers with best-in-class service and high quality merchandise” (CVS, 2015). CVS’ encouragement of open communication
Question 1 Peter Loescher was hired by Siemens when the company was experiencing extremely difficult times. After the bribery scandal, the main goal was to gain back the trust and respect from the customers and partners, as well as building a new vision. The company’s board of directors decided that they needed a person from outside of the company, who had no connection and loyalty to previous vision, and no affiliation with previous management team. In my opinion, the company owners hired Loescher for a specific purpose to change the overall team perception of how work is supposed to be done.
Bass & Riggio (2005, pp. 4-8) explains that transformational leaders inspire their followers to exceed their own expectations and perceived capabilities and is comprised of the four components of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration. DuBrin (2016, p.163) suggest that leaders in a time of crisis need to
In order to increase strength in the position of transformational leadership. In terms of business, Lou Gerstner, the present chairman and CEO of IBM is one of the best examples
Therefore, the source of competitive advantage for Barclays would be quality customer care as envisaged in their strategy in citizenship and continuous development of new and unique products for the market. The ability to enjoy economies of scale from supplies and large capital structure should also offer Barclays, a hand in increasing competition. Institutional capabilities and endowment Barclays bank has both physical and intangible resources to help it grow to a leading financial institution in its strategic plans. It has both distinctive and threshold capabilities to allow it create a competitive advantage against its rivals (Warner, 2010).
1. What factors in the WorldCom case support the conclusion that CEO Bernie Ebbers Knew about the financial statement fraud? What factors support his defense that he did not know about the fraud? Bernie Ebbers Knew about the financial statement fraud because he was the one who encourage others to go into financial fraud because of the stock prices were going down, which was affecting his marginal loan. For that reason, he was trying to sell his stock, but the board of Directors lent him $341 million, along with 2% interest rate.
Background WorldCom, once known as one of the most powerful telecommunication organizations of the world, is now studied as a case of a fraudulent company that carried out unethical financial activities to cover its weakening position in the market. After some aggressive investment decisions, the company started to witness huge financial pressure. The management used various forged accounting entries to conceal its weakening position. Cynthia Cooper, Vice President Internal Audit, discovered the unethical activities and raised the issue with the management and relevant departments and received bitter responses. She carried out internal audits in her own capacity with her colleagues and compiled evidence against fraudulent activities.