...ACC 260 Week 2 The Enron and WorldCom Scandals Material A+Grade Get Tutorial by Clicking on the link below or Copy Paste Link in Your Browser https://hwguiders.com/downloads/acc-260-week-2-the-enron-and-worldcom-scandals/ For More Courses and Exams use this form ( http://hwguiders.com/contact-us/ ) Feel Free to Search your Class through Our Product Categories or From Our Search Bar (http://hwguiders.com/ ) Assignment: The Enron and WorldCom Scandals • Resource: Business & Professional Ethics • Due Date: Day 7 [Individual forum] • Review the accounts of the Enron and WorldCom scandals in Ch. 2 of the text: o Enron’s Questionable Transactions on pp. 96-107 o WorldCom: The Final Catalyst on pp. 114-118 • Answer the following questions using complete sentences: o Enron: 1, 3, 5, 6, and 9 on pp. 106-107 o WorldCom: 1, 3, 4, and 5 on p. 118 • Post your answers as an attachment. Clearly label the case and question number for each of your responses. Enron questions 1, 3, 5, 6, and 9 1. Which segment of its operations got Enron into difficulties? The first thing that got them into trouble was the fact that Kopper was appointed to Fastow and he was an employee of Enron. I do not believe that he had the best interest involved. Another thing was that over 11 million was suppose to be invested and it never was. I believe that this was the start of the problems! Another thing was the fact that Enron was incorrectly booking revenue for services that was...
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...Samples for Module 1 Case Assignment of ETH501 The following sample from student papers is meant to establish some guidelines on how to approach your essays. The first sample shows an excellent introduction to the first case. The student author provides his/her own approach and allows the reader to know what is going to be discussed. The second example simply uses a long quotation that is not properly formatted. It does not lead the reader into the critical ethical analysis that is required. The third and forth examples show a part of the critical ethical analysis. Remember, if you have any questions, please ask. An excellent source for finding your own voice in academic writing is: http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/academic/4bi.html. This cite has good examples with explanations. Sample 1: You do not have to discuss that it is a paper. You do have to tell the reader what you will be discussing. Note also that there is a Heading. Introduction The purpose of this assignment is provide a critical analysis of the 2002 collapse of the WorldCom telecommunications empire as seen through the lens of deontological ethics. This analysis will be accomplished by defining deontological ethics and the Categorical Imperative (CI); by generally establishing what ethical problems were inherent in the WorldCom case; by evaluating the WorldCom model according to a deontological ethics; and finally by using Immanuel Kant’s construct of the CI to assess the WorldCom scenario. For the...
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...Assignment I: Tainted Baby Powder Milk 1. Yes, I believe there has been some damage to Baidu.com’s reputation because there was a significant stock price drop from $308 to $110. Stock price drops usually are the result of a lack of confidence by the stakeholders in the future performance of the company. Lack of confidence can often be attributed to actions by a company that are revealed to the stakeholders. 2. Future reputational damage could be reflected by a lack of confidence of the stakeholders. This lack of confidence could be measured in consumer behavior. Consumers could choose to buy goods elsewhere, so as not to risk their family’s health by potential tainting of products. This change in consumer behavior has been demonstrated many times when the media reports a fast food restaurant serving tainted beef, or even the drastic reduction in air travel immediately after the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Even though, 9/11 was not the direct fault of an airline, consumers feared more attacks and therefore would not travel. This greatly affected profits and stock prices of the airline industry. 3. Baidu must prove to the stakeholders that it is reporting the issue fully and honestly. It is tempting for companies to withhold damaging information, but eventually it will come out and the deception is more damaging to the company many times than the truth ever would have been. The more transparent the company is in communicating the issues, the easier...
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...WorldCom Tarrell King University of Phoenix Week 1 Assignment August 18, 2009 Between 1991 and 1997, Bernie Ebbers, the CEO of WorldCom, spent $60 billion by successfully completing 65 acquisitions. The two most prominent acquisitions were the MFS Communications acquisition that enabled WorldCom to obtain UUNET. UUNET was a major supplier of Internet services to business. The second major acquisition was MCI Communications because they became WorldCom’s largest provider of business and consumer telephone service. From 1983 to 2002 WorldCom developed from a humble long distance telephone company to the second-largest long distance telephone company in the United States and one of the largest companies handling worldwide Internet data traffic, and finished as the largest bankruptcy of an organization in American history (Moberg, 2008). The purpose of WorldCom was to provide mission-critical communication services for tens of thousands of businesses internationally. WorldCom owned and operated 75 data centers on five continents. The organization owned and operated a global Internet Protocol backbone that provided connectivity in more than 2,600 cities and in more than 100 countries. Before the bankruptcy of the organization, WorldCom carried more international voice traffic than any other company and carried a significant amount of the world’s Internet traffic. Bernie Ebbers and the managers of his company were supposed oversee the activities of WorldCom and ensure...
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...The Corporation and Its Stakeholders Register for Ethical Lens Activity; Read “What is Ethics”(Niihka) Complete Ethical Lens Inventory. Bring results to class and submit to Niihka Week of Aug 31 Class One Owners as stakeholders Text Ch 14: Stockholder Rights and Corporate Governance Inland Bank; Cisco (Niihka) Inland Bank and Cisco case assignments (Niihka) Class Two Owners continued Living Richly (text, pg. 236); Adelphia (Niihka) Adelphia case assignment (Niihka) Week of Sept 7 Class One Labor Day – NO CLASS ClassTwo Forms of business; Intro to Business Processes “Forms of business” excerpt (Niihka); Ciao Baby Pesto case (Niihka) Baby Pesto case due Week of Sep 14 Class One Customers as stakeholders Text Ch 15: Consumer Protection Read Guns Excerpt Odwalla case due Class Two Read Chapter 3 Timberland case due Week of Sept 21 Class One Suppliers as stakeholders “Intro to Supply Chain Management,” excerpt from Handfield (Niihka) Class Two Suppliers cases Beech Nut (Niihka); Ford and Firestone (Niihka) Ford and Firestone case assignment (Niihka) Week of Sep 28 Class One First Exam Class Two The community as stakeholder Text Chapter 18 Corporate Philanthropy vs. Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Philanthropy and the Arts (text) Corporate Philanthropy and the Arts case assignment (Niihka) Week of Oct 5 Class One Employees as stakeholders Text Ch 16: Employees...
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...Assignment Week 1 The Case of Phar-Mor Inc Devry University ACCT 525-15768 January 12, 2014 Abstract The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was implemented with the sole purpose of assuring the investors in the financial reporting system. One example is a case such as Phar-Mor which fabricated their inventory in most of their retail stores in order to conceal a massive fraud by the leading executives. Or the Waste Management scandal which did things such as capitalizing items which should have been left on the income statement in order to increase their assets. Lastly, Enron, which had such an elaborate scheme in place that it was hard to decipher and was only uncovered when the CEO stepped down. It is not to say that SOX could have prevented these scandals but instead it helped create this act that will help set place 11 laws or sections to help deter such elaborate frauds in future leading companies. Week 1 Assignment-The Case of Phar-Mor Inc The Phar-Mor accounting scandal of $500 million was a massive fraud conducted by upper management which ultimately led to its bankruptcy in 1992. President Michael Monus, chief financial officer Patrick Finn, vice president of finance Jeffrey Walley, controller Stanley Charelstein, and accounting manager John Anderson were all convicted of financial statement fraud. As a result of this fraud charges were also filed against Phar-Mor’s independence audit company, Coopers & Lybrand LLP (Coopers). It is in direct response to accounting...
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...Running Head: Is Ethics The Main Reason For Accounting Scandals? Is Ethics The Most Important Reason Behind Years of Accounting Scandals? Joshua A. Williams DeVry University Is Ethics The Main Reason For Accounting Scandals? Ethics: Is It The Most Important Reason Behind Years of Accounting Scandals? Ethics is a term that refers to a code or moral system that provides criteria for evaluating right and wrong (Spiceland, Spe, Tomassini, 2007). An ethical dilemma is a situation in which an individual or group is faced with a decision that tests this code. Many of these dilemmas are simple to recognize and resolve. For example, have you ever been tempted to call your professor and ask for an extension on the due date of an assignment by claiming a fictitious illness? Temptation like this will test your personal ethics. The direct issues when dealing with ethics is that it cannot be measured or quantified it is intangible almost to a fault. A person’s ethical background can be affected by all types of outside forces such as familial background, financial status, and educational backgrounds as well to name a few. Ethical codes are informative and helpful. However, the motivation to behave ethically must come from within oneself and not just from the fear of penalties for violating professional codes (Spiceland, Sepe, Tomassini, 2007). There is specific analytical model which gives a sequence of seven steps that provide a framework for analyzing ethical issues. These...
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...Week 5 Individual Assignment By Felicia Lattimore The SOX Act: Unethical Practices and Behavior in Business Accounting LAW/421 – CONTEMPOARY BUSINESS LAW September 6, 2014 Aretha Somerville Introduction Unethical decisions can ruin a business. Dishonest behaviors by accountants, such as falsifying financial statements, over-billing or misleading regulators, can tarnish a company's reputation, causing loss of customers, employees and/or revenue. In some cases, unethical behavior is also illegal and can result in fines and even jail time for not only accounting executives but management executives as well. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was enacted in 2002 in the wake of a series of high-profile corporate and accounting scandals. SOX introduced major changes to corporate governance and the regulation of financial reporting that affected both publicly traded companies and their auditors. Ten years after the passage of SOX, there has been a dramatic increase in financial statement restatements. This is due to statement issuers complying with SOX during their initial preparation. This trend has been attributed to improved corporate governance as a result of SOX. Although we have not seen restatements as large as those of Enron and WorldCom in recent years, it is not clear that SOX has caused a reduction in the number of restatements across all publicly traded companies. The number of restatements during 2007 through 2009 declined, but they remained...
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...A Letter from Prison: Background: Introduction to Accounting Ethics. Reading Assignment: The case Summary of Sarbanes-Oxley (2nd page of this document) Pages 18-19 of the text. Assignment Questions: 1. What did Stephen Richards and other members of Computer Associates management do? 2. What impact did these actions have on financial statement users? 3. What were the motivations for these actions? 4. Do you believe the actions taken by Richards and other members of Computer Associates' management are acceptable or cross the line into unethical or illegal behavior? Provide reasons for your answer. 5. What other actions could Computer Associates have taken to achieve its financial reporting objectives. For each alternative action, assess whether you believe it is acceptable or whether it crosses the line into unethical or illegal behavior. 6. What actions can other companies take to avoid the same outcome as Computer Associates? 7. Suppose you faced the same pressure as Stephen Richards to extend the fiscal quarter. How would you respond and what would be the expected consequences? 1 The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) a. also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called SOX or Sarbox; b. enacted on July 30, 2002 in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, and WorldCom. c. The Act establishes a new quasi-public agency, the Public Company...
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...NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET Learner: MGT7019-8 THIS FORM MUST BE COMPLETELY FILLED IN Please Follow These Procedures: If requested by your mentor, use an assignment cover sheet as the first page of the word processor file. The assignment header should include the Learner’s last name, first initial, course code, dash, and assignment number (DoeJXXX0000-1) justified to the left and the page number justified to the right. Academic Integrity: All work submitted in each course must be the Learner’s own. This includes all assignments, exams, term papers, and other projects required by the faculty mentor. The known submission of another person’s work represented as that of the Learner’s without properly citing the source of the work will be considered plagiarism and will result in an unsatisfactory grade for the work submitted or for the entire course, and may result in academic dismissal. | | MGT7019-8 | Dr. Janis McFaul | | | Ethics in Business | Assignment 8 | | | ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Faculty Use Only ------------------------------------------------- Layla: ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Paper- Health South: The Scrushy way Layla O. Mora ...
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...Draft - Corporate Governance Considerations This material was prepared by Eliot H. Sherman – July 2005 FOCUS Learning Objectives By the end of this chapter, you should be able to: Understand the issues related to agency and delegated responsibility. Describe the similarities and the differences in the corporate scandals that have been identified in the past few years Identify the responsibilities of managers to the shareholders and other stakeholders associated with their corporations. OVERVIEW Corporate governance is not a new topic. It has been around for many years, often described as the “agency issue.” However, in recent years it has taken on increased significance, demanding increased attention. Since 2001, in particular, the corporate marketplace has seen a significant number of headline grabbing scandals involving major corporations. These scandals have raised new questions about corporate governance and, as a direct consequence of some of these situations, the U.S. Congress passed a very broad piece of legislation called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. This law has had a wide range of consequences directly affecting large public corporations and public accounting firms and, less specifically, smaller public firms, private corporations, not-forprofit organizations and regulatory entities in many different ways. This law mandates some specific actions for large public corporations, many of these actions being required shortly after the legislation passed and others in...
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...------------------------------------------------- Assignment 1: Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley LEG 500 LEG 500 Whistle blowing has its origins from an example of law enforcement blowing a whistle when someone finds a crime or some wrongdoing process in a government. So when wrongs are taking place in government, the public they serve suffers (Chambers, 2014). The government is supposed to be open. Whistleblowers have to care about the issues that are going on in the workplace for them to commit such energy into the act. They have ethics and morals. The whistle blower is passionate about their work and its proper execution (Chambers, 2014; Lowry, Moody, Galletta, & Vance, 2013). The recent case of September 2014, Katherine Mitchell, Paula Pedene, and Damien Reese brought to light the wrongdoing at Phoenix Veteran Affairs hospital where records on appointment data were falsified to hide delays in treatment. There was financial mismanagement in the agency which was later confirmed by the inspector general after the three exposed the issue (Hicks, 2014; Lee & Fargher, 2013). Paula was punished by the management because she spoke against financial mismanagement in the hospital. She was given a desk and a job in the basement. Katherine's supervisors tried to sabotage her career by giving her a position of overseeing quality of patient care. Given that the three were protected under the Sarbanes Oxley act, they were later promoted by the agency. In this way...
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...Citigroup: Restoring Ethics and Image Before Growth Charles Prince, CEO of Citigroup, is facing a daunting challenge as the head of the largest financial services organization in world. He has joined a company that has experienced significant regulatory scrutiny and that has been linked to the biggest scandals in corporate history. Unfortunately for Prince, the problems are pervasive throughout most of Citigroup’s diverse service offerings. In March 2005, Prince announced his strategy to transform the financial giant and to provide a new direction for the future. He called it the “Five Point Ethics Plan” to: improve training, enhance focus on talent and development, balance performance appraisals and compensation, improve communications, and strengthen controls. Due to the size and complexity of the organization, there were significant unresolved questions. How could the plan be effectively revealed? Would the plan be strong enough to change the culture of the entire organization? How should the corporate communications department handle both the initial and long-term communication of this plan to major stakeholders? About Citigroup Incorporated in 1998, Citigroup Inc. is a diversified global financial services holding company providing services to consumer and corporate customers. The company has approximately 141,000 full-time and 7,000 part-time employees in the United States and 146,000 full-time employees in more than 100 countries outside the United States. All of Citigroup’s...
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...The problem to be investigated in this assignment is the ethics of institutions. Are businesses operating in an ethical or unethical manner? Goldman like many other operations use behaviors that were unethical and grossly unfair to clients. Shaded areas are areas to be defined by the individual interpretation itself. Many say money is the root to all evil and as this case dictates, true. Ethics should always be at the forefront of any organization. Operating a business requires adequate consideration to a number of issues outside the traditional scope of making money, of which ethics is mostly certainly one. As a business grows, so does its significance. Businesses impact lives and the environment in which they strive to exist. Jobs, wealth and inspiration of entrepreneurship is created when businesses are birthed. This is why business ethics are important because they not only affect the business itself but its employees as well; individual names and faces are linked to businesses and how they are ran. There are many benefits to operating a business in an ethical way: long-term success, profitability, good client relationship, corporate growth, competitive edge and trustworthiness. The initial intent of Mr. Goldman was to be trustworthy and build his company with good business ethics but mishaps set in. Discussion Question 1: Go back through the case and make a list of each action or practice that could be called a gray area: 1. Goldman’s initial investment strategy...
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...ESAMI EXECUTIVE MBA ASSIGNMENT FOR ELIJAH S. DLAMINI INTAKE 27 MBABANE COURSE: CG601 STUDENT ID# 27EMB12312 INSTRUCTOR: MR G. KACHALI TOPIC DISCUSS THE NEXUS BETWEEN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND PREVENTION OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION IN THE WORKPLACE This paper will discuss the relationship between corporate governance and prevention of Fraud. One can safely argue that corporate governance is a medicine to cure corporate fraud in an organisation. The systems, procedures and policies set by the organisation to curb anomalies such as fraud and corruption largely entail corporate governance. To make this task easier, this paper shall define in detail the meaning of corporate fraud and later proceed by way of analysing how it can curbed by corporate governance. Wikipedia defines fraud as follows: It is a deception made for personal gain at the expense of an entity. According to GAW Kachali, it involves deception, confidence and trickery. There is local, national, regional and global resurgence of interest on how to prevent all forms of unethical practices such as corruption and fraud in both private and public sector including public bodies. Generally institutions with resources to prevent or combat corruption and fraud in all sectors seem to thrive. This is mainly successful through the setting up of strong pillars which promote transparency, fairness, professionalism, integrity and democracy in running the organisation; this is made possible by corporate governance. Corporate...
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