Sarbanes Oxley Act Questionable If It Really Helped Or Hurt Securities Market In US
August 27, 2008
In 2002 the Sarbanes Oxley Act was passed into federal law after the American nation was shocked by scandals that rocked large businesses from Enron, WorldCom, and Adelphia to name a few. These scandals all related to businesses and firms using insider trading to get ahead resulting in the loss of share value to many individual investors and drastically reducing the American’s faith in trading and investing in the stock market in general, but most noticeably in the securities market as they were all centered on businesses there. If you remember the Enron scandal in 2002 you will remember the amount of press coverage it received and how many top businessmen ended up in jail. The Sarbanes Oxley Act, also known as the “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002″ was... Read more »
Business Ethics: A Quiz with Many Right Answers
July 23, 2008
You can find various business ethics quizzes around thPick the one answer you think is wrong. This one is different. Each question has only one WRONG answer, doesn’t analyze your answers and tell you where you went wrong. Rather, it is simply intended to raise your ethical consciousness, maybe even stimulate a little discussion between you and your peers or family. In this quiz, try to pick the answer that is wrong. I hope the “wrong” answers are obvious if you care about business ethics. Enjoy! 1. My reputation a. Is only as good as my word b. Precedes me c. Once lost is hard to regain d. Is the legacy I’ll leave behind e. Doesn’t matter to me. 2. Following my employer’s Code of Ethics a. Could... Read more »
Your Personal Code of Ethics: How Does it Work in Today’s World?
July 22, 2008
Each of us carries around within us a personal code of ethics. We may not be conscious of it; we may not deliberately consult it on a daily basis, we may not apply a decision tree against it to make a choice, but it exists. And, at times, it may falter, or we may apply different ethical principles in different situations. Take a minute to identify your fundamental ethical philosophy. Which of the descriptions below best captures the way you like to operate in the world? 1. Humans have no special place within the world, but are just one of thousands of expressions of life. People have desires and free will and so can alter their nature. However, if one acts unnaturally, it upsets... Read more »
When In Business Remember Your Values And Your Principles
July 18, 2008
The pressures people face as entrepreneurs can at times become burdensome. You are the boss, the one person within your company that is ultimately responsible for everything that goes on. Sometimes you may feel all alone in the world that makes up your life. And sometimes the pressure can seem overwhelming. Being in business for yourself does not mean living in a perfect world. So when challenges arise and things become difficult remember what your own personal set of values and principles are. They will help to make up who you are and how you want to run your business. Values like honesty, integrity, trust, and treating others like you would like to be treated should not be taken lightly. In business your values... Read more »
Business Ethics: Why They Are Important For a Company and Its Success
July 11, 2008
Business ethics is an interesting branch of business theory, primarily because of the fact that they are inherently interesting in a market economy. People tend to be extremely distrustful of corporations in market economies and the bigger they are, the worse that problem of trust usually gets. Business ethics therefore are politically charged in many different circumstances and that in turn serves to make them interesting. Aside from this academic interest however, business... Read more »
Integrity on the Internet?
June 23, 2008
Integrity in business, especially on the internet, seems to be a quality that, unfortunately, is rarely found nowadays. The internet marketing world has become so glutted with hype, scams and empty promises that even the most trusting of us have become skeptical about the claims we’re subjected to on a daily basis. So when we find a company or a person with real integrity, we’re impressed, and much more likely to do business with them. Integrity is the basing of one’s actions on an internally consistent framework of principles. Integrity is also the cornerstone of every truly successful business. It is the idea... Read more »
Personal Leadership Makes Trust Possible
June 13, 2008
The probability that he will go to jail for what he did is almost zero. His lack of personal leadership resulted in thousands of people feeling violated, cheated and betrayed. If his patrons trusted him before, his impersonal approach to leadership shredded that trust in a matter of milliseconds. We won’t give our support to leaders we don’t trust. 2008 is an election year in the U.S., with selection of our next President taking the main stage. We want someone we can trust to lead us for the next four years. We’re willing to give our enthusiastic support to those we trust so that we can achieve significant results together. When trust is lost, disillusionment and... Read more »
Business Ethics: Five Things You Need to Know
June 10, 2008
You may think that business ethics pertains to OTHER people. You learned good ethics at your mother’s knee. Well, what did she tell you about conflicts of interest? As a former Director, Ethics and Compliance for a $1.5B publicly traded organization, I learned a few important bits of information I would like to share with you. 1. A conflict of interest is when someone puts their own interest above those of the organization they work for. I found this to be the most commonly misunderstood concept in business ethics. Here is an example: You sometimes buy lunch for your staff. As it turns out, your wife recently invested in a nearby sandwich shop which will deliver lunch. Isn’t it okay to throw your lunch business her way? Well, probably... Read more »
Business Ethics: Three Tips to Stay in Integrity with Yourself
June 9, 2008
Wow — every day seems to bring us a new story about business ethics wrongdoing! Is America headed to hell in a hand basket because of a serious lack of ethics at the highest level in American business? Or, it is just that ethical transgressions are more visible now? Or is it that the media reports more? Whichever it is, I urge you to be concerned about business ethics, even if simply for yourself. A few facts will raise your awareness about the current state of ethics in American business. The Ethics Resource Center notes that the number of ethics programs is on the rise in corporate America. Unfortunately, the center also... Read more »
Employers Protection Against The Ridiculous
May 19, 2008
The UK is fast becoming the Health and Safety nightmare of the modern world. There are those who work in the care sector who are not allowed to come into physical contact with the people they care for fear of breaching some health and safety law, there are those in childcare who are not allowed to so much as apply a sticky plaster without a signed waver from the parent. Of course, to counteract all these nonsense rules we have health and safety training. You can go on a course if you want to be certified to apply plasters to grazes which always comes in handy when you’re working in a playschool. If the teachers are away on health and safety training courses... Read more »
