...instance of whistleblowing in one publicly traded company within the last 12 months. Include details of the issue that the whistleblower reported and the effect of the whistleblower’s actions on both the whistleblower himself and the company. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a whistleblower as a person who reveals something covert or informs against another. The decision to blow the whistle on work place malfeasance is not an easy one and not a decision one takes lightly. While this person does have the opportunity for financial gain, they also have an internal desire to right a wrong. They have to have the ability to preserver through personal and professional suffering. Their reputation can be damaged and they may be branded a snitch. Before making the decision to bring the misdeeds to light a whistleblower wrestles with where does their loyalty lie? It is with their employer and co-workers or with the greater good for society as a whole. After blowing the whistle they have to have the tenacity to see their decision through, which may be a lengthy and grueling process (Archambeault & Webber, 2015). David Danon worked as a tax lawyer at Vanguard for five years. In 2013 Danon accessed certain privileged and confidential Vanguard documents. When he refused to return them he was fired. He had chosen to send these documents to both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Internal Revenue Service (Whistle-blower or revealer of trade secrets?, 2014) . Danon has filed...
Words: 1191 - Pages: 5
...Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley: Examining Publicly Traded Companies Abtract A whistleblower is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonesty or illegal activity occurring within an organization. A whistle-blower will speak out, typically to expose corruption or dangers to the public or environment. The alleged misconduct, danger or corruption may be classified in many ways; such as, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health and safety violations, and corruption. Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally to other people within the organization, or externally to regulators, law enforcement agencies, media outlets or to groups that are concerned with the issues they are bringing forth. In this paper I will describe key characteristics of a whistleblower and give details on a recent case. History of Whistle blowing and Recent Case The Key characteristics of a Whistle-blower are a person who is honest and fearless. Whistle-blowing requires a person to have tenacity and a fighting spirit because those who take the action to Whistle-blow are in for a long, tough road. Whistle-blowers are often put under public scrutiny and shunned by co-workers and communities and go through long strenuous legal battles before seeing any justice served. Whistle-Blowers also must combat retaliation from their employers, such as being fired or put on work suspension. The first case of whistle-blowing occurred...
Words: 880 - Pages: 4
...characteristics of a whistle-blower are honesty and fearlessness. Whistle-blowing requires a person to have tenacity and a fighting spirit because those who take the action to Whistleblowing are in for a long, tough road. Whistle-blowers are often put under public scrutiny, shunned by co-workers and communities, and go through long strenuous legal battles before seeing any justice served. Whistleblowers also must combat retaliation from their employers, such as being fired or put on work suspension. The first case of whistle-blowing occurred nearly over 200 years ago. By a unanimous vote, The Continental Congress enacted the first whistle-blower protection law in the United States on July 30, 1778. The Continental Congress was moved to act after an incident in 1777 when Richard Marven and Samuel Shaw “blew the whistle” and suffered severe retaliation by Esek Hopkins, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy. Congress declared that the United States would defend the two whistle-blowers against a libel suit filed against them by Naval Commander Hopkins. The Continental Congress also declared it the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all others who inhabit the U.S. to inform the Continental Congress or proper authorities of any misconduct, fraud or misdemeanors committed by any officers in the service of these states, which may come to their knowledge (Lipman, 2012). A publicly traded company that has recently been in the news for whistle-blowing is...
Words: 731 - Pages: 3
...External Sources 14 1.0 Executive Summary WorldCom’s origin can be traced to the 1983 breakup of AT&T. Small, regional companies could now gain acces to AT&T’s long distance handphone lines at deeply discounted rates. The companies turn to Bernard J (Bernei) Ebbers, one of its original nine investors, to run things. Ebbers had previously been employed as a milkman, bartender, bar bouncer, car salesman, truck driver, garment factory foreman, high school basketball coach, and hotelier. Eventhough he is lacked technology experience. In 1996, WorldCom entered the local service market by purchasing MFS Communications Company, Inc., for $12.4 billion. MFS’s subsidiary, UUNET, gave WorldCom a substantial international presence and a large ownership stake in the world’s Internet backbone. The figure below is the executive summary of WorldCom:- In this case, the pressure of the business condition drives the BOD of WorldCom to do unethical action. The person involve in this cases are Bernard J. (Bernie) Ebbers and Scott Sullivan. The major problem that WorldCom has face is Industry conditions began to deteriorate in 2000 due to heightened competition, overcapacity, and the reduced demand for telecommunications services at the onset of the economic recession and the aftermath of the dot-com bubble collapse. Failing telecommunications companies and new entrants were drastically reducing their prices, and WorldCom was forced to match. The competitive situation put severe pressure...
Words: 2938 - Pages: 12
...Executive Summary Whistle blowing is when an employee raises a concern about wrongdoing or malpractice in the workplace that has a public interest aspect to it. Persons who act as whistle blowers are often subjected to retaliation by their employers. Therefore it became important to protect whistle blowers by introducing the Disclosure Protection Act (Act 26 of 2000). The purpose is to provide procedures and offer protection to employees against organisational detriment. Even though the Act intends to protect whistle blowers, the reporting rate has declined. Thus it is crucial to investigate the current procedures in order to provide recommendations to improve the Act, consequently curbing fraud and miscarriage of justice. Question 1 • How are informants being protected? As employers and employees consequently have to disclose criminal and unwanted conduct within the workplace, steps need to be instilled by employers to ensure that whistle blowers are protected from occupational detriment. This act attempt to prevent employers from treating disclosing employees with detriment such as disciplinary action, demotion, harassment, unwanted transfers, etc. • Who is being protected? Employees disclosing legitimate concerns about irregularities are being protected by the act. Those employees are to be protected from unwarranted conduct by their employers and cannot be discriminated against. They may not be victimised or penalised by their employer in any form for having made...
Words: 3059 - Pages: 13
...refers to illegal offenses that are generally committed in the business or professional setting (white collar versus blue collar jobs) to achieve financial gain. Crimes that do not involve physical violence, and that relate largely to financial matters, are often called white collar crimes. Corporate corruption is out of control for two main reasons. First, big companies are now multinational, while governments remain national. Big companies are so financially powerful that governments are afraid to take them on. It is very important to study the cause and the possible solution for the increase in numbers of white collar crime; our focus needs to shift from Blue Collar Crimes to White Collar Crimes. U.S.A spends nearly $50 billion on fighting Blue Collar Crimes, not even quarter of that amount is spent on fighting White Collar Crimes. Hardly a day passes without a new story of malfeasance. Every Wall Street firm has paid significant fines during the past decade for phony accounting, insider trading, securities fraud, Ponzi schemes, or outright embezzlement by CEOs. A massive insider-trading ring is currently on trial in New York, and has implicated some leading financial-industry figures. And it follows a series of fines paid by America’s biggest investment banks to settle charges of various securities violations. They are essentially "paper crimes" in which the perpetrator uses deceit to obtain money, property or some professional advantage. White collar crime encompasses a number...
Words: 2916 - Pages: 12
...tried to save the situation with an attack on Jha. Liska objected to Jha’s hiring, his compensation package and the co-CEO agreement. Liska’s behavior markedly deteriorated after Jha’s hiring, implying that he was unhappy to be outranked by the new co-CEO. The reason behind Liska’s inflammatory presentation is a matter of contention. Liska says he was trying to fulfill his duty to the company by raising a red flag about the cellphone unit’s projections. Motorola says Liska knew he was on his way out, and he tried to extort the company by setting himself up as a whistle-blower who was being fired for speaking out. Another famous whistleblowing case is the case of WikiLeaks.2 WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organization which aims to publish online submissions of classified information, news leaks 3 from anonymous news sources and whistleblowers.4 It unleashed the wrath of the U.S. government and a wave of recrimination and reprisals against WikiLeaks and its key figures. Twitter was the only Internet Company to support WikiLeaks while others cut off essential resources to WikiLeaks’ survival. The goal of WikiLeaks is "to bring important news and information to the public”. People publish original source material alongside the news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. The social...
Words: 1625 - Pages: 7
...Sherron Watkins—Revelations of a Letter Who Is Sherron Watkins? Sherron Watkins gained fame as the so-called “whistle-blower” in the Enron accounting scandal. “Enron hid billions of dollars in debts and operating losses inside private partnerships and dizzyingly complex accousnting schemes that were intended to pump up the buzz about the company and support its inflated stock price.” Watkins wrote two letters, one anonymously, to Enron’s chairman, Kenneth Lay. In those letters she “exposed top officials—perhaps including Lay himself—who for months had been trying to hide a mountain of debt, and started a chain reaction of events that brought down the company.” Watkins had a “flair for numbers” and the training and expertise to recognize a “funny accounting scheme.” She received an accounting degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981 and a master’s degree in accounting in 1982, after which she went to work for Arthur Andersen’s Houston office. Watkins transferred to Andersen’s New York City office and then subsequently returned to Houston in the early 1990s to work for Enron. Eight years after joining Enron, Watkins had risen to the position of vice president for corporate development. According to one retrospective account of the Enron scandal, Watkins “understood that something very bad was going on, something everyone else seemed to think was perfectly okay, and that public revelation would be disastrous.” Somehow Watkins “was able to escape the groupthink...
Words: 2155 - Pages: 9
...Acme Manufacturing Network Plan Ann Johnson IT/242 October 23, 2011 David Edwards Acme Manufacturing Network Plan Acme Manufacturing needs a new network plan implemented for corporate, three distribution centers in Chicago, Phoenix, and New York, and is expecting to expand with a new facility in China. A successful network design provides future growth within the organization. Meetings are scheduled weekly in the main Atlanta Headquarters conference room with the facilities from Phoenix, New York, Chicago, and China attending via telecommunications. The network plan will include the type of cabling needed for each facility, the equipment used to connect the different facilities, and the installation of Voice over IP (VoIP) and Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs). Security measures are needed including firewalls and a backup plan. The lines required to carry the traffic on the network are leased T1 lines and a satellite connected overseas. T1 leased lines are used for the Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, and Chicago offices. China connects through a satellite service. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) connects wireless users to their designated department through mobile devices. Routers are used to direct communication between LANs and are needed at each department. Voice over IP (VoIP) has opened possibilities for more interactive communication across WAN networks. VoIP bypasses the need of conventional telephone hardware by transmitting voice over the existing data line...
Words: 1193 - Pages: 5
................................................................................................................. 16 References........................................................................................................................ 24 BKAL 3063 Integrated Case Study 0 CASE 3 : Accounting Fraud at WolrdCom Introduction WorldCom, US second largest telecommunication company shocked the world by filing bankruptcy at 21 July 2002. The WorldCom filing surpassed Enron and became the largest bankruptcy filing in United States history. Due to its rapid growth, WorldCom is also heavily in debt as they finance the company growth with debt. The collapse of WorldCom did not just affect their employees, retailers, the government but also bankers. WorldCom was a multi-billion dollar telecommunications company that was founded in 1983. The company starts their business under the name 'Long Distance Discount Services' (LDDS), providing long distance telecommunication services. The venture was profitable right from the start. In 1985, Bernie Ebbers became the company's CEO. The company changes its name to WorldCom in...
Words: 6350 - Pages: 26
...Sherron Watkins—Revelations of a Letter Who Is Sherron Watkins? Sherron Watkins gained fame as the so-called “whistle-blower” in the Enron accounting scandal. “Enron hid billions of dollars in debts and operating losses inside private partnerships and dizzyingly complex accousnting schemes that were intended to pump up the buzz about the company and support its inflated stock price.” Watkins wrote two letters, one anonymously, to Enron’s chairman, Kenneth Lay. In those letters she “exposed top officials—perhaps including Lay himself—who for months had been trying to hide a mountain of debt, and started a chain reaction of events that brought down the company.” Watkins had a “flair for numbers” and the training and expertise to recognize a “funny accounting scheme.” She received an accounting degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981 and a master’s degree in accounting in 1982, after which she went to work for Arthur Andersen’s Houston office. Watkins transferred to Andersen’s New York City office and then subsequently returned to Houston in the early 1990s to work for Enron. Eight years after joining Enron, Watkins had risen to the position of vice president for corporate development. According to one retrospective account of the Enron scandal, Watkins “understood that something very bad was going on, something everyone else seemed to think was perfectly okay, and that public revelation would be disastrous.” Somehow Watkins “was able to escape the groupthink...
Words: 2155 - Pages: 9
...------------------------------------------------- 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...
Words: 874 - Pages: 4
.... Ethics-Whistleblowers Laura Dove Bus 670 Instructor Starcher July 18, 2011 Ethics/Whistleblowers In this ever-increasing society, businesses are becoming more competitive to increase the success of the organization. These organizations must ensure their operations adhere to the specific regulatory guidelines set forth by the government. For this reason, organizations place emphasis on proper management and preventive measures to alleviate risks of legal liability. With adequate knowledge active steps can be taken to eliminate risk factors and reduce the affects of any possible risks. Some critics believe that businesses should adhere to an ethical or a socially responsible behavior that is higher than the law. Organizations and or employers tell us that one way to increase compliance with the company’s core ethical values is to convince the staff that their best interest and the firm’s are met by acting ethically (Mallor, Barnes, Bowers, & Langvardt, 2010). Moreover, if the company’s ethical values are in place, the action to report unlawful behavior should not be as difficult. Subsequently, individuals labeled as whistleblowers in the workplace has a challenging, ethical and or morally, as well as lawful thing to do. The intent of this paper is to give a brief synopsis of ethics, whistleblowers, dilemmas of whistleblowers, legal issues involved with individuals labeled as whistleblowers, to include the government and society (The Occupational...
Words: 2615 - Pages: 11
...encouraging whistleblowers to step up in recent years, however more must be done. Regulators must continue to improve protection and incentives for whistleblowers to come forward. In addition corporate culture must change in its negative view of whistle blowing. Most importantly though professionals, especially accountants must understand that they are serving the public interest and thus must step up and reveal any fraudulent or unethical activities that hurt the public. Whistle blowing is hard to encourage and federal authorities have been doing terrible job of it until recently. The trend has been changing, first with the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 that included a provision for expanded whistle blower protection. The act made it legal for public companies to fire employees that reported any illegal activities in which a firm or its employees...
Words: 1762 - Pages: 8
...| “How Personal Can Ethics Get?” | Frank Gladden | | Strayer University | | | 1. Discuss how personal differences and preference can impact organizational ethics. Personal differences and preferences impact organizational ethics due the fact that we all have a different set of ethics at some level. These differences will lead to conflict at times. This is where an organization’s need to create its own sort of ethic, which some organizations refer to as a Code of Conduct, can blend the individual employee’s personal code into that of the organization. Ethics can be defined as a set of values and principles that help us determine what is right and wrong1. It can also be described as a moral code. Lawrence Kohlberg’s model of moral development points out how a person’s moral code (ethic) can begin and grow. It can be shown as a step progression: 1) Obedience and Punishment. 2) Instrumental. 3) Interpersonal. 4) Law and Order. 5) Social Contract. 6) Universal.2 If a person never progresses to the top of the model, they may or may not do certain things in an organization that they may or may not have done whether someone knows about it or not. A person’s ethic, most agree, start at home. We are raised with our parents’ own opinions of what is right and wrong. Then, as we grow, our ethics are further molded and adjusted by our peers in school, places of worship, and other social organizations. For example, in some cultures, it is considered...
Words: 1355 - Pages: 6
