...The Value of Digital Privacy in an Information Technology Age Mona McQuaig LEG500 Introduction Magnificent Bookkeeping Accounting Firm Inc., is a trusted bookkeeping and accounting firm in the local community, that has been in business for over 10 years. We offer employment opportunities to up and coming accountants in hopes that they will become a part of our magnificent firm and/or move on representing our firm as a great educator of successful accountants. Recently we have experienced a few challenging employees and this report will discuss how we address those issues with those employees according to the situation, our company policies and the employment at will doctrine. Upon employment with our company, in any capacity, employees are orientated on our mission, goals and values, their responsibilities and expectations, as well as, educated on the employee handbook in great detail. All employees are giving in written and are signed in agreement that employment with Magnificent Bookkeeping Accounting Firm Inc., is at will; that neither the firm nor the employee has an expressed or implied a contract of employment and employment can be terminated at any time by either party. Skills, Competence, and Abilities Magnificent Bookkeeping Accounting Firm Inc., has an excellent recent graduated hiring program. The program offers the graduates the opportunity to work while gaining experience in the accounting profession. The graduates are expected to meet...
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...Coretta Brown Assignment 4: Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property LEG500 August 25, 2014 Write an eight to ten (8-10) page paper in which you: http://www.insidebusiness360.com/index.php/ethical-issues-faced-by-marketers-18696/ Legal and ethical situations have been a topic in the business world since day one. Legal and ethical can sometimes be confusing in the work place if there are not rule and regulation to abide by in the organization. Legal is an act according to law, not in violation of law or anything related to the law. Ethical involving questions of right and wrong behavior relating to ethics and following accepted rules of behavior that are morally right and good. 1. Research three to five (3-5) ethical issues relating to marketing and advertising, intellectual property, and regulation of product safety and examine whether PharmaCARE violated any of the issues in question. Marketing is the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer. Advertising is the act or practice of calling public attention to one's product, service, need, etc., especially by paid announcements in newspapers and magazines, over radio or television, and on billboards. According to Mathenge,“Over the years, advertising and marketing communication messages have created a lot of debatable ethical issues, due to the public belief , that advertisements...
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...Compare and contrast potential conflicts of interest that may exist between the internal and external stakeholders: RESPONSE: According to Corporate Governance P.30 of chapter one, internal stakeholders are shareholders may risk losing profit if information being withheld by Dr. Do Right is investigated, found to be true and the hospital suffers loss of reputations, law suits. Although the legal liability of shareholders is limited by law to the amount of investment they make in the company, their expectations that all reporting operations of the company is in accordance with guidelines set by corporate roles, rights and responsibilities. Further, the hospital is expected to operate in accordance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. This Act protects the financial management of a company. Another example cited in textbook page. 73 "Experiences of Qui Tam Whistleblowers against the Pharmaceutical Industry" Write summarized their investigation of the motivation and experiences of health care industry whistleblowers focusing on the False Claims Acts. Dr. Do Right's legal responsibility would fall under this category since he knowing is allowing patients to be killed with the false pretense that the deaths are due to causes not associated with the hospital. The External Stakeholders conflicts of interest would exist only if the stakeholders were aware of the ethical, civil, and fraud taking place in a company to which they are doing business with. Further, the external stakeholders...
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...Electronic Surveillance of Employees Flor Leticia Rivera-Michel Strayer University LEG 500 Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance Niki Wilson January 25, 2011 1. - Explain Where an Employee Can Reasonably Expect to have Privacy in the Workplace. In this modern world is difficult to determine where our private life begins and ends and where our work life start, through the years we have seen how employees sometimes take advantage of the resources available to them in their workplace and use them for personal gain, this has led the company to have better control of the activities performed during employee work hours, such as phone calls and internet use. Employees are accustomed to using the technology made available in the workplace for purposes other than job duties. Although generally discouraged by employers, checking news headlines, doing some on on-line shopping, sending personal e-mails, or socializing on Facebook while at work are everyday occurrences. Many still feel as though these actions go unnoticed by employers and assume, incorrectly, that their activities remain private. (Communications of the IIMA, 2005) In my point of view our personal life had to be limited during of work hours, its notorious that some personal calls are necessaries, but we have to avoid abuses, “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”, if we are no abusing the companies resources available for us, we won’t be afraid of being monitored. The privacy employee...
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...Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance Professor Nekia S. Hackworth, Esq. Assignment 1: Employment-At-Will Doctrine Strayer University: LEG500 October 31, 2012 Employment-at-will is a legal rule that developed in the nineteenth century; giving employers unfetter power to “dismiss their employee at will for good cause, for no cause, or even for cause morally wrong, without being thereby guilty of a legal wrong (Halbert & Ingulli, 2012, p. 49). The most common protected categories are those that protect an employee's civil rights based on age, race, sex, religion, national origin, color, disability including the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), or pregnancy. An employer is also prohibited from discharging an employee for whistle blowing, or because the employee has filed a claim for workers' compensation. Acts that run counter to public policy, such as sexual harassment, are also exceptions to the employment at-will doctrine. Finally, an employer may not terminate an employee where an implied employment contract exists (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 2006). 1. Describe what steps you would take to address the following scenario involving skills, competence, and abilities: The employee seems to be unable to learn the computer applications that are basic to her job responsibilities, but consistently “tells” her boss that she is “a good worker and a genius” and that he does not “appreciate her.” Even after a few months of training and support, she is unable...
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...Identify the parts of this law that appear to benefit employees. In 1987 the Montana Legislature was enacted. It is also known as the Wrongful Discharge from Employment Act or the WDEA., it covers all non-union employees who are not otherwise subject to an employment contract for a set term, who have been on the job for at least six months, unless the employer has an established probationary period. (Montana 2012) The act created a cause of action for employees who believe that they were terminated without good cause. The law benefits employees because it gives employee the right to challenge a wrongful termination in court. The law also limits damages to up to four years of lost wages, including the value of benefits, with interest. It prohibits discharge for other than good cause. Identify the parts of this law that appear to benefit employers. The state laws protecting whistleblowers vary enormously, but none of them protect whistleblowers who turn to the media first. Discuss why you think this is so. Explain why it either encourages or discourages ethical behavior. The purpose of the SOX whistleblower protections is to remedy the wrongdoings of corporations. The media doesn’t help the company.I believe that an employee should try to deal with the problem internally before going to the media. You want people to turn to media after they have done everything they could. I think that not protecting whistleblowers that turn to media first discourages people that have the...
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...Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley Act Student Name College or University Name LEG500 – Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance Professor’s Title Date Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley The federal government passed and put into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) to primarily protect whistleblowers from retaliation for reporting corporate fraud and financial malfeasance to the government. The negligence became apparent in the 1990’s when corporations such as Enron, HealthSouth, Tyco and WorldCom were found to have grossly overstated their earnings. This cost billions of dollars in losses to shareholders and caused the near-collapse of the stock market (Prentice, 2010, p. 17). The companies were able to hide, scam or misrepresent their earnings due to the dot-com boom, soaring investments, and auditor fraud. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act contains many sections, sub-sections and creation of other agencies to enforce it. It was a sweeping change to standard reporting practices and was created to restore investor confidence, hold corporations and auditors financially and criminally accountable, and protect whistleblowers. Prior to the creation of SOX the whistleblower had no protection from retaliation by the organization. Whistleblowers had fears of criminal prosecution, bodily harm and job loss if they reported the misdeeds of their employer both publicly and privately. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 redefined the whistleblower. An examination of the characteristics of a whistleblower...
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...The Value of Digital Privacy in an Information Technology Age List and describe at least three technologies that allow an individual to research citizen’s private data. Personal information is collected from a multitude of public and private databases. Among the public collection of databases the following can be found on nearly any U.S. citizen who has included themselves in any of the following: birth, marriage, or death certificates; public court filings, arrest records, and property tax rolls; state issued licenses such as drivers and/or professional licenses. Facebook, Spokeo, and CensusLink are among the many private sector databases of collected information on U.S. citizens. Those whom have had their privacy breeched in most cases freely provided the information and signed or initialed a waiver, which they probably failed to read. Chances are that until a problem becomes evident one will not realize the true consequences of their disclosure of said information. Social Networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the myriad of clones which have popped into existence in the last decade are some of the largest purveyors of information about individuals. Facebook is the largest social network service provider in the U.S. Research shows the following facets of Facebook; there are more than 350 million active users; more than 35 million users update their statuses at least once a day; more than 2.5 billion photos are uploaded to the site monthly; they...
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...Corporate Governance and Ethical Responsibility Strayer University LEG 500 November 13, 2012 Corporate Governance and Ethical Responsibility Dr. DoRight has recently been hired as the President of the “Universal Human Care Hospital”, where he oversees all departments with over 5,000 employees and over 20,000 patients at the medical facility. He has been provided with a broad set of duties and oversight of numerous departments, including business development, customer services, human resources, legal, patient advocacy, to name a few. He has managers in each department that he supervises and who work with him to address the needs of the various internal and external stakeholders of the hospital. Dr. DoRight discovers that some patients within the hospital have been dying as a result of a variety of illegal procedures by doctors and nurses, and negligent supervision and oversight on their part. This was brought to his attention in a few meetings and he told his Regional Director Compliance Manager and Executive Committee in January 2009. He was told by them that the matter would be investigated and they would report any findings to him as soon as possible. After two (2) years, there have been no results from the investigation and some patients are still passing away due to the negligent activities. He also answers to a board of trustees and interfaces with numerous community organizations and corporations who have various reasons for doing business with the hospital...
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...Betty drove three hours in one hundred degree heat. Explain if this fact has any bearing on whether or not the dealer must perform in accordance with the published advertisement? Under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consumer protection rights there are laws, rules and procedures on how to buy a used car, make payment options and rights to warranties, but there no laws that requires a car dealer to be responsible for the means or ways you as a buyer of reaching his or her place of business. That is a business decision, decided among the members of theirs families and friends and how they respond to the car dealership advertising. Betty went through a pretty bad experience driving for three hours in the intense heat to reach the car dealership. But, the car dealer bears not responsibility in this matter, even after Betty phone called confirming the price. When Tony said over the phone “three thousand dollars firm,” explain whether or he was making an offer that, if accepted, would bind the dealership in contract .“The Law of Contract in modern terms could be defined as 'an agreement containing a promise enforceable in law'. The four component parts of a contract are: 1) Agreement, offer and acceptance, 2) Mutuality and consideration, 3) Mentally Competent parties, and; 4) A legal objective. In a contract, if no time is specified for the performance of an act, a reasonable time is allowed. The reasonable time may be longer than one of the parties contemplates...
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...Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley Assignment 1 LEG 500/Professor Augustine February 3, 2014 A Whistleblower by definition is someone who exposes a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity. Whistleblowers expose those that commit misconduct or an alleged dishonest and/or illegal activity within an organization. The infraction must be a violation of a law, rule or regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, like fraud, health and safety violations and corruption. In almost every part of society the way information is given becomes the most important objective in the fight against misconduct and malpractice. Obtaining information can be difficult as those involved often make it their best interest in hiding the information from the public and authorities. It really helps to receive information regarding the wrongdoing from someone who has actually witnessed the incident, willing to come forth with intricate details. Whistleblowing can provide resolutions to certain situations by opening thought to be nonexistent and disclosed information sources and connections. Reasons behind whistleblowing can vary. Such as, when someone observes the wrongdoing within their workplace and requests to speak to a figure head of the organization to their morals. Whistleblowing becomes a much stronger case when it involves a large portion of the public. The publicly traded company that I researched was the whistleblowing of Bernard L. Madoff Securities LLC. The company...
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...Running Head: PRODUCT LIABIITY Case Background Donna and Peter Laliberte filed a lawsuit against the Japanese based automotive corporation, Mitsubishi, after their 25 year old son, Scott Laliberte was killed during a car crash while riding as a passenger in a 2000 Montero Nativa SUV that was manufactured by Mitsubishi. On September 25, 2004, the driver of the SUV lost control of the vehicle, which caused the SUV to roll over. The driver and the passenger were wearing their seat belts, however; the seat belts were not manufactured in the same manner. Mitsubishi manufactured the passenger seat belt of the vehicle with a special stitching that is referred to as energy management looping or rip stitching. Mitsubishi v. Laliberte (2010), gives the following detail regarding the energy management looping: The front passenger seat belt in the 2000 Nativa incorporated an energy management ("EM") or energy absorbing ("EA") stitched loop system. This stitched loop seat belt system was designed in such a manner that ten inches of seat belt webbing was folded over and sewn together with a series of threaded stitches contained within a plastic scabbard. The seat belt stitches were designed to break loose and introduce additional seat belt webbing into the right front passenger's restraint system to better manage occupant movement in frontal impacts. The additional ten inches of looping is being blamed as one of the product liability issues that led to the death of the victim. The Laliberte...
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...Assignment 3 Ivory Harris PharmaCARE Scenario Strayer University Prof. Campbell Stakeholders Describe the key characteristics of a stakeholder and determine all the stakeholders within the PharmaCARE scenario. The primary stakeholders in a typical corporation are its investors, employees, customers and suppliers. According to Project Management Tips (PMTips.net/blog/defining-stakeholders, n.d.), some of the key characteristics of a stakeholder is a) a person who stands to gain or lose through the success or failure of the project, a ROI b) provides funding for the project c) has invested resources in the project, d) is affected by the outputs of the project, e) is in the “chain of accountability”. The stakeholders within the PharmaCARE scenario would be the CEO, PharmaCARE’s executives and its Shareholders/stockholders of the company. Analyze the human rights issues presented by PharmaCARE’s treatment of the Colberia’s indigenous population versus that of its executives. Recommend at least three (3) changes PharmaCARE can make to be more ethical going forward. Corporations are expanding their business enterprise to less regulated poorer countries where they can violate human rights with the cooperation of that countries government, and make the officials rich. The corporations are setting up businesses in other countries where the indigenous people of that area are poor, often living in less than standard conditions and working for huge corporations...
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...LEG500: Law, Ethnics and Corporate Governance 17 July 2011 1. Explain where an employee can reasonably expect to have privacy in the workplace. Reasonable expectation of privacy for an employee could require a balancing test as what the US District Court judge used in the 1996 case of Michael A. Smith v. The Pillsbury Company. The judge ruled in the defendants favor saying that Pillsbury’s “interest in preventing inappropriate and unprofessional comments or even illegal activity over the email system outweighed any privacy interest the employee may have in those (email) comments”,( Halbert 2011, p.72). In this case, it was more important for Pillsbury to know what communication was going out through its email system than it was to protect Mr. Smith’s privacy. Consequently, where an employee expects to have reasonable privacy depends on the employers’ own policy within the workplace. The policies need to be clear and easily accessible to the employee. Many US companies would have their policies posted on their internal websites where an employee can review them at anytime. The information normally spells-out that any use of company facilities or equipment garners the right for that employer to monitor it at any time. This could include their email system, voicemail system, company phone, company car, etc. To be honest, I think arguably the places where an employee can expect reasonable privacy are within a more enclosed ...
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...Kenia Freeman Professor Teresa Smallwood LEG500 August 18, 2013 Organization leaders have a responsibility for upholding the proper standards as they pertain to ethical behaviors in the workplace. Leaders are constantly faced with making the best decisions possible for their corporations and to increase profits for company stakeholders. Unfortunately, some stakeholders do not always make the right choices, especially when the wrong one choice is more enticing. My research will determine the stakeholders invested in PharmaCARE, analyze the ethics of their treatment of the indigenous population and its rank-and-file workers versus the executives, and determine whether Allen can legally fire a few of his employees. Also, determine Allen’s whistleblowing opportunities, obligations, and protections. I will assess PharmaCARE’s environmental initiative against the backdrop of its anti-environmental lobbying efforts and Colberian activities and analyze the original purposes of and the changes to Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). PharmaCARE is a leading pharmaceutical company known for being caring, ethical and well-run that produces high-quality products that have saved and enhanced the lives of millions. The company offers free and discounted drugs to low-income consumers, has a foundation that sponsors healthcare educational programs and scholarships, and its CEO serves on the PhRMA board. The stakeholders here are pretty much...
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