Main Point
This article focuses on WorldCom’s culture of ethics and how this culture led to criminal charges by reporting accounting irregularities of $11 billion in 2002. There are many ethical theories from many points of view, but the bottom line of the article is poor ethical cultures and bad accounting practices lead to disruption of performance and in order to move forward there is a need to educate future business leaders to set high ethical standards and goals for themselves and their employees.
Critique
From a logical standpoint the author discusses business ethics and the ethics at WorldCom. The author presents many facts within the article form an unbiased view and I agree that WorldCom did not take any responsibility for incorporating any of the basic ethical principles; WorldCom leaders ignored any opportunity to do what was morally good and morally right. The author expands on the importance of a code of ethics and culture within an organization which helps teach and remind employees to do the right thing which I strongly agree needs to be a top priority within every organization. But the author also presents the idea that ethical education provides little benefit to strengthen a culture of ethics, which I disagree with. Ethics and culture of character start from the top down and this form of education embeds the ethical culture of the organization. It is also logical that a company with a strong code of ethics will outperform and outlast companies without, which the author states well. Once these fail it is a long road back to an ethical culture and may never be reestablished.
Application
A failure of moral and ethical values is a topic that no person would ever want to be associated with in their company. Trust within an organization is the top priority and creating a corporate culture that employees respect and abide by will allow the