Following is a summary of the article: “Who by Lying, Who by Cheating, Who by Stealing, and Whom Shall I Say Is Calling?” by Alan Briskinn, posted on 09/28/2015 in the Huffington Post.
His article was written post the VW debacle, wherein software was created to mask the large amounts of toxins released from cars sold to public as clean diesel. Results were obvious, devaluation of the share price of VW, forthcoming fines, VW on the top of case studies on Corporate Ethical Breaches.
The author follows through with his study by analyzing such ethical ‘breaches’ in the past. Be it the Enron Scandal in 2001, or the Wall Street Collapse in 2008, and now the VW disaster, all have one thing in common, their businesses were triumphing, giving them tremendous power.
The …show more content…
The character of Joker, from the movie ‘The Dark Knight’, made a very apt observation when he said, “You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble."
In my opinion, the author is right. When any individual/employee finds himself in an ethically challenging position, he truly has no option. Either he stays committed to what he truly believes in or he has to face the consequences, which obviously are not very favourable, leading towards the situation of moral compromise. But whether one’s lies are small or big, they are still a liar. And once they end down that road, there is no coming back. Getting habituated to smaller transgressions, leads only to larger ones.
The only solution to avoiding these kinds of catastrophes is having the requisite governance mechanisms, which identify the moral and legal boundaries of a business entity and help in maintaining its ethical health, because Employees are only as good as their Employers allow them to
His article was written post the VW debacle, wherein software was created to mask the large amounts of toxins released from cars sold to public as clean diesel. Results were obvious, devaluation of the share price of VW, forthcoming fines, VW on the top of case studies on Corporate Ethical Breaches.
The author follows through with his study by analyzing such ethical ‘breaches’ in the past. Be it the Enron Scandal in 2001, or the Wall Street Collapse in 2008, and now the VW disaster, all have one thing in common, their businesses were triumphing, giving them tremendous power.
The …show more content…
The character of Joker, from the movie ‘The Dark Knight’, made a very apt observation when he said, “You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble."
In my opinion, the author is right. When any individual/employee finds himself in an ethically challenging position, he truly has no option. Either he stays committed to what he truly believes in or he has to face the consequences, which obviously are not very favourable, leading towards the situation of moral compromise. But whether one’s lies are small or big, they are still a liar. And once they end down that road, there is no coming back. Getting habituated to smaller transgressions, leads only to larger ones.
The only solution to avoiding these kinds of catastrophes is having the requisite governance mechanisms, which identify the moral and legal boundaries of a business entity and help in maintaining its ethical health, because Employees are only as good as their Employers allow them to