Corporate Culture
John Doe
Blank University

Abstract
This paper explores the corporate culture people face in the business world. The decision making model of ethics emphasizes the responsibility of individuals for the decisions they make in business. These decisions impact one’s own personal integrity and also have consequences for many stakeholders with whom business organizations interact. But, personal decision making does not exist in a vacuum. The case study in this paper is about Merrill lynch and to identify what were the ethical issues involved with this company. Every organization has a culture fashioned by a shared pattern of beliefs, expectations, and meanings that influence and guide the thinking and behaviors of the members of the organizations.

Corporate Culture
Merrill Lynch, one of the largest brokerage firms on Wall Street, has agreed to pay $160 million to settle a racial bias lawsuit that wound through the federal courts for eight years, including two appeals to the United States Supreme Court. The payout in the suit, which was filed on behalf of 700 black brokers who worked for Merrill, would be the largest sum ever distributed to plaintiffs in a racial discrimination suit against an American employer. Soon after the suit Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch. (Weise)
Merrill Lynch organization has broken the rule of ethics, which it had discriminated all black people that worked for Merrill. A company should not discriminate just because one is of a different race or where they come from but to have some morals and ethical standards by which they operate. Of course there are always two side of the story and one own opinion can’t just make a final conclusion as to why it happened but what went wrong. According to the plaintiffs, they claimed that they were discriminated because the company employed relatively few African-Americans overall. In a 2009 plaintiffs filing, they contended that fewer than 2% of the brokers at Merrill Lynch were black. (Herlihy, B. (n.d.). ACA Ethical Standards Casebook.)
However, some managers would encourage that black brokers to learn to play golf or other activities designed to learn how business gets done in manner (they) might not be familiar with. Other issues were that Merrill Lynch prevented black brokers from working with high profile clients, the suit alleged. It also promoted a companywide policy that encouraged associates to work together on certain cases, and blacks were generally excluded from these beneficial partnerships, the lawsuit stated. Finally, after creating an atmosphere that prevented the success of African-American financial advisers, executives at Merrill Lynch would allegedly publicly badmouth the performance of minority employees, the suit alleged. (Weise)
There should be an increase in government regulations to help prevent these terrible issues that many company face and the loss of great employee that enjoyed their job and lost them. These great organizations should have strategic operations in place and trained their management to learn to treat everyone with as equals, not being bias toward one specific race or background but to be fair across the board. Any company refusing to abide by the laws or rule impose from the government should not be able to be in business bottom line. (Hartman 2014)
The problem tends to be a matter of individuals gone wrong. The reason is simple, the company has to have equal opportunity training before an employer could hire an employee so everyone has a thorough knowledge on how to treat everyone equally so it all boils down to management. So the reasons are at an individual level and not a systemic and organizational level. (digitalcommonlaw)

Conclusion In summary, defining specific culture within any organization is not an easy task because

it is based on each participant’s perception of the culture. Several elements that can be perceive,

such as attitudes and behaviors, are only a small fraction of the elements that compromise the

culture. A firm’s culture can be its sustaining value, offering it direction and stability during

challenging times or it can prevent a firm from responding to challenges in creative and timely

ways. Despite the fact that corporations have many locations, with diverse employee groups and

management styles, an individual working for a large global firm in one country will share

various aspects of her or his working culture with someone working for the same firm halfway

around the world.

References

Hartman, L., & DesJardins, J. (2014). Decision Making for Personal Integrity & Social Responsibility. In Business Ethics (2nd ed.). McGraw Hill
Herlihy, B. (n.d.). ACA Ethical Standards Casebook.
Weise, K. (2013, November 27). The Man Who Took On Merrill. Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-27/merrill-lynchs-racial-bias-settlement-vindicates-george-mcreynolds

(n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1939&context=fac_pubs