Corporate Ethics

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how ethics are the foundation for personal trust between subordinates and managers and for companies' transparency with investors, analysts and their customers. The paper looks at Enron as an extreme example of what happens when there is a lack of ethical behavior that highlights the need for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The paper then focuses on the SOX legislation and its impact on corporate responsibility and goes on to explore the literature on the role of ethics in organizations.

Outline:
The need for Corporate Ethics and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
Aligning Internal Ethics with External Responses
Summary

From the Paper:

"At their most basic and fundamental level, ethics are the foundation by which trust and transparency are created in professional and personal relationships. In addition, ethics has been found to play a role in leadership, organizational effectiveness, job satisfaction, employee turnover, and organizational justice. A survey of 7500 managers from a range of private and public organizations nationwide (Kouzes & Posner, 1990) found that 87% of those surveyed selected honesty as a characteristic of superior leaders, and integrity was selected as the most important leadership characteristic, even above competence. Clearly a trustworthy and transparent person who has ethics is preferable as a co-worker or boss and friend over one that may be brilliant intellectually yet marked by duplicity in terms of their ethics."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Greenberg, J. (1990). Employee theft as a reaction to underpayment inequity: The hidden cost of pay cuts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 561-569.
• Jeremy and Ilako (2005) Protecting the Brand, Scott Jeremy and Charles Ilako. PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Accessed from the Internet on February 23, 2008.
• Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1990). The credibility factor: What followers expect from their leaders. Management Review, 79, 29-33.
• Mill. J. S. (1861). Utilitarianism. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) - U.S. Senators Sarbanes and Oxley. Passed in 2002 by both U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Text viewed on the Internet on February 22, 2008: http://www.aicpa.org/info/sarbanes_oxley_summary.htm

More papers on Corporate Ethics:

• Analytical Essay # 134483 : "Corporate Ethics from a Metaphysical Perspective"
• Analytical Essay # 115818 : "Corporate Ethics Programs"
• Research Paper # 105034 : "Corporate Ethics"

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