bussness homework 1
i have 7 qusiton i want them finish on Wednesday the qustion is
1.In our preliminary discussions on ethics and social responsibility, one of the key pieces we need to understand was that an ethical company culture comes from the top down. Top executives and managers need to create this culture. Do you think this happened at Enron? Discuss this. If managers didn’t create an ethical culture how did they contribute to creating an “alternative” culture? See pages 45-49 for ways ethics can be improved by an organization or manager and use these to compare and contrast what happened at Enron.
2.One of the topics that emerges is the idea of deregulation. In some cases this means that the government allows companies and corporations to do business with less interference and usually less monitoring. The thought is that businesses need this type of freedom to do well and if they do well the country benefits…profits, jobs etc…How do you feel about this? Do you think we can trust corporations to self-monitor and to be ethical? Can you think of more recent examples where lack of regulation or the ignoring or regulations has caused major problems in the business world?
3.What about the idea of the government and/or our politicians not only giving freedom but actually giving an advantage to certain corporations.
4.Discuss other safeguards that failed such as Certified Public Accounting firms not holding to their own code of ethical conduct. In the case of Enron, Arthur Andersen, gave approval on financial statements that were questionable. This of course gave outside stakeholders (and some inside stakeholders) a level of confidence that things were legitimate.
5.One of the things said in the documentary was that Enron was “too big to fail”. This is something we’ve heard again and again as justification for the government bailouts for auto companies and banks. Do you believe it is justified that we do bailout corporations that are going to fail? Why or why not?
6.Discuss how Enron is an example of law vs. ethics
7.Contrast the Efficiency Perspective with the Social Responsibility Perspective then use examples from this documentary to illustrate this.
