Please see your syllabus, which notes this assignment. For the following assignment, which is 10% of your overall grade for the course, please read the following articles in your "Course Documents":
-"Illegal Downloading..."
-"The Ethics of Expediency"
-"Articles about Successful Business People"
-"Facebook articles"
These articles all have a common thread - either what people are doing write or doing wrong.
I would like to use this information regarding the issues with social networking and ethics in the workplace, and use it to create a one page blog that goes a step further and explores the ethics of recent workplace issues. Go to CNN.com, MSN.com, HuffingtonPost.com, etc... and read articles that interest you about ethics in business. There are LOTS of problems around this issue today. You will need to write about either the ethics in business or ethics in social networking, or a combination of both. For example, using these articles as a springboard, you could write on the ethics of Goldman Sachs using risky schemes to post record profits in the last week, especially considering that we just bailed them out a few months ago for making bad decisions. Or write about lobbyists controlling the vote in Congress, so that big corporations are making decisions that benefit them but not the average person. Be creative. No one person's blog will resemble anyone else's blog. It needs to show research (note the article and date when you write) and I would like to see at least 2 noted sources when you write your piece. It might be easier to write it in Word first and then copy it over. Please do not use this as a sounding board for personal issues. It is fine to be personally interested in the piece, but it also needs to be researched and show fairness and impartiality. Your grade for this assignment is based on noting the sources within the article, addressing the directions for this blog, and showing thoughtfulness about what you are writing.
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Article: “Belkin Employee Paid Users for Good Reviews”
ReplyDeleteSource: New York Times, David Pogue
Date: January 19, 2009
We all know the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes, however, other motives, such as personal gain or success get in the way and cause us to stray from morals that have been instilled in us since we were young. Such is the case with Belkin online sales representative, Mike Bayard.
Mike Bayard was a top online sales representative for Belkin, a company that manufacturers technological devices and accessories. He decided it would be a good sales move to pay consumers to write positive reviews of Belkin products. This not only skews a potential customers decision to purchase an item, but it is also morally wrong. The products that Bayard was asking consumers to write reviews for were ones that were consistently ranked low and did not sell well.
According to the book Fundamentals of Contemporary Business Communication by Scot Ober, people make unethical decisions for one of these reasons: 1) They do what is most convenient, 2) They do what they must to win, and lastly 3) They rationalize their choices. Now, after reading the article on Belkin’s representative, I believe that it was a combination of these three things that made him make the bad decision to pay online consumers for their positive reviews of Belkin products. Online shopping is just about as convenient as it gets, but when products are constantly getting low reviews and not selling, what is the easiest thing to do? Find a way to produce positive reviews. This is exactly what Bayard did; he paid consumers 65 cents per positive review. Being a top sales representative, his reputation and position may have been at stake because of these products that would not sell. By compromising his morals and sense of right and wrong, he was able to get ahead. Then, of course, he might have rationalized his decision by thinking: “Well, these products are not selling and they are made by my company, a company I believe in, so it seems ok to me that I am paying consumers for reviews. After all, the consumers did by these products so there cannot be anything too terribly bad about them.” It is for these reasons, I believe, the Mike Bayard made a decision like this.
When Belkin executives found out, they took immediate actions to correct what Bayard had done. A statement released by Belkin president, Mark Reynoso, stated that Bayard’s superiors knew nothing about what was going on with the reviews. Reynoso acknowledged that Bayard’s actions were wrong and unethical. He also said that he was extremely sorry for the incident and was working hard at regaining the trust of online customers. They took down all the false positive reviews and did whatever else was necessary to make sure that other consumers were shown unbiased critiques.
After reading the article printed in the New York Times about Mike Bayard, I continued my research in order to find the letter from the Belkin president to consumers. So Bayard did make an unethical decision that may have compromised the integrity of Belkin, but Belkin executives tried to rectify what Bayard did as best they could by removing all of the false reviews. With the help of the book Fundamentals of Contemporary Business Communication by Scot Ober, I was able to easily figure out why Bayard did what he did. Ethics is a reoccurring theme in the workplace. Employees and superiors need to maintain contact and monitor each other to make sure that the integrity of the company is upheld.
-Elizabeth Shuler
Works Cited
Ober, Scot. Fundamentals of Contemporary Business Communication. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.
Pogue, David. "Belkin Employee Paid Users for Good Reviews." New York Times. 19 Jan. 2009. Web. 26 July 2009. http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/belkin-employee-paid-users-for-good-reviews/
Reynoso, Mark. "Letter from the President: Product Reviews." Belkin Press Room. Belkin. Web. 26 July 2009. http://www.belkin.com/pressroom/letter.html
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ReplyDeleteEveryone knows the difference between what is right and wrong. Some people just don’t care about how their wrong decisions will affect other people. According to the article “Students Share Illegally”, Farish claims that when people do not care about their unethical decisions it is an example of willful ignorance. In Houston, Texas this is exactly the case for Dr. Arun Sharma and his wife Dr. Kiran Sharma. They have been charged with conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.
ReplyDeleteA criminal complaint claims that thus far into the investigation the couple has defrauded both Medicare and Medicaid close to $9 million dollars. However the investigation is still under way and sources say that the fraud could be three times that. Dr. Sharma and his wife’s office is always crowded with patients. Laurie Gruver, a woman who works across the street, says, “Lots of traffic, 3 cars deep, they come and go all day long when he’s in the clinic”. Supposedly the couple saw approximately 70 patients a day, many of which were addicted to pain killers. One of the couple’s patients received over 92 different prescriptions for various pain killers in a seven month period. Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services referred to the Sharma’s office as a “pill mill”. The criminal complaint alleges that Dr. Sharma prescribed his patients over 615,000 tablets of Vicodan, 66,000 tablets of Xanax, and 26,000 tablets of Valium in a nine month period. There are many people across the United States that use pain killers as their drug of choice and Dr. Sharma saw his power as a doctor as a way to make some extra cash. Federal Agents found $700,000 in the Sharma’s home and an additional $816,000 in two safety deposit boxes at a nearby bank belonging to Dr. Sharma. The Medicare definition of fraud is the intentional deception that an individual commits, knowing that the deception could result in some unauthorized benefit to himself, herself or some other person. The most common form of medical fraud associated with Medicare results from a false statement being filed resulting in payment. This is exactly what Mr. and Mrs. Sharma did. They unnecessarily issued prescription drugs to their patients and then kept the money for themselves without documenting any of the cash flow. Dr. Kiran Sharma has been taken into federal custody where she will wait until her appearance before a U.S. Magistrate Judge. Her husband, Dr. Arun Sharma, is expected to surrender to authorities soon.
After the Sharma’s fraud had been invested, teams of federal agents conducted raids on 12 different medical locations in Houston accused of 32 different indictments. These healthcare providers have been charged with making over $12 million dollars in fraudulent claims related to Medicare. After the raids twenty-three people were taken into custody. One of the top Department of Justice investigators said, “There's a real problem of health care fraud in recent immigrant communities — we see it everyday,“ the official said. “One of the reasons is you're looking at people who don't come up through the educational system, they're impoverished, they think this country is very rich, and they don't view taking advantage of a government program as a crime.” He explains the violation of business ethics from a different angle. According to book the Fundmentals of Contemporary Buisness Communication by Scot Ober, one of the steps in making an ethical decision is to evaluate the options to see if they are legal. However if someone is unaware of the laws they would make an unethical decision without knowing they had done anything wrong.
Works Cited
“Medicare definition of fraud.” Findlaw. 19 Feb 1998. Web. 29 July 2009.
Ober, Scot. Fundamentals of Contemporary Business Communication. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.
Pinkerton, James. “Agents conduct medical fraud raids across Houston”. The Houston Chronicle. 29 July 2009. Web. 30 July 2009.
Simon, Steve. “Doctors charged with Medicare fraud.” KIAH-TV. 24 June 2009. Web. 29 July 2009.
What does it mean to be ethical? Every person has his or her own belief as to whether something is right or wrong. Some are more lenient, while others are harsher. With all these different beliefs, it’s hard to determine where to draw the line to have a consensus of what is ethical and not. However, most people can agree that breaking the law can be considered unethical and that is what happened this Wednesday during a Medicare fraud bust.
ReplyDeleteOn Wednesday July 29, 2009, federal authorities arrested 30 people, and are seeking others in a major Medicare fraud bust in New York, Louisiana, Boston, and Houston. The authorities said that the businesses were giving patients certain types of kits that cost up to $4,000, were unnecessary, and most patients never even received them (Dozens). Additionally, the suspects were falsely billing medical items that were not needed, never used, or were used personally (Frillici).
Another one of their scams involved billing Medicare for thousands of dollars worth of liquid food for the patients who couldn’t eat solid food. Authorities also mentioned that the clinic owners never even distributed the food to patients and in some cases, billed patients who were dead (Frillici).
In Scot Ober’s Fundamentals of Contemporary Business Communication, he mentions that people make unethical decisions for one of three reasons: they do what is most convenient, they do what they must to win, or they rationalize their choices. I do not believe this type of unethical behavior could be rationalized with one of these reasons. Because authorities had to freeze bank accounts and seize possessions from Rolls Royce’s to million dollar homes purchased with funds stolen from Medicare (Dozens), another category should be added for selfishness. The suspects weren’t doing what was convenient, what they could to get ahead, nor rationalizing their actions logically. They acted unethically for the reason of greed and bettering themselves.
What I do agree with is when he talks about a culture affecting ethics, and the “everybody does it” defense. He states that people are likely to do something because everybody else is. Over the past few years, Medicare Fraud has become more and more prevalent that in some Miami neighborhoods, the fraud is so rampant that it has become the cultural norm (Dozens).
Since 2007, authorities have indicted more than 293 suspects and organizations that have cost the Medicare program more than $674 Million (Dozens). These 30 arrests have just added to that list, and if regulations of Medicare don’t change soon, those numbers will continue to increase.
"Dozens Nabbed in Medicare Fraud Busts." Fox News. 29 July 2009. Web. 31 July 2009.
Frillici, Leigh. "Dozens arrested in Medicare fraud busts in Houston, other cities." KHOU.com. 29 July 2009. Web. 31 July 2009.
Ober, Scot. Fundamentals of Contemporary Business Communication. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008. Print.
Jennie Cumbie:
ReplyDeleteBusiness leaders know the difference between right and wrong, but when it comes down to choosing between morals and personal gain, some of them choose the wrong path. As an economy, we constantly see news headlines with corporate ethics problems and business scandals, and unfortunately, this will probably never change. Breaking the code of ethics in business results in severe consequences but sometimes the biggest problem can never be solved completely. This problem is the hurting of the victims of unsound ethical decisions. One of the biggest and most commonly heard of scandal in the business world today is in the financial field, including fraud, stock exchange, and lending. This aspect of business ethics affects thousands of people every year.
A story most United States citizen has heard of is the Martha Stewart stock scandal. She was tipped to sell her shares of ImClone Systems by the founder, Sam Waksal. On March 5, 2004, the jury claimed Martha Stewart to be guilty of all charges of deceiving investors after telling them she sold stock for false reasons (Timeline). Sam Waksal knew it was against the law to tip Stewart on this information, but he did it anyway because he put friendship and personal reasons before ethical reasons. At the time, Waksal thought the scandal would be worth the consequences, if they were to ever get caught, but he quickly found out that breaking business ethics calls for very serious measures.
A similar financial scandal affected my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina in 2007 when officials finally figured out the intensions of self-proclaimed “Economan”, Al Parish. He grew up right outside of Charleston and then later studied Math at the College of Charleston and Economics at the University of North Carolina. He flourished in the business world after inviting investors to join his corporation and promised them that they would get great results and huge returns. These returns were seen almost immediately and people became more and more enthralled by him. After proving that he was an economic genius, he became a very influential figure all over the country, especially in Charleston. He was a business professor at College of Charleston then started the ethics program at Charleston Southern University. This was seen as such a coincidence after Parish was found guilty of fraud after his investors starting losing all of the money they had given him to work with. He was put in prison, but most of his clients’ money will never be recovered. (Stock)
Not only are business leaders such as these ignoring corporate ethics, but they are harming innocent people for personal gain. In such incidences like these, greed and selfishness takes over the leaders’ hearts and for the time being, ethics and anyone but themselves are out of the picture. Ethics are standards that need to be followed, but I feel like the United States has taken a huge step in trying to stop this phenomenon by having such strict consequences.
Works Cited
Stock, Kyle. "The Rise and Fall of Charleston's Economan." The Post and Courier. 15 April 2007. Web. 2 August 2009.
“Timeline of Martha Stewart Scandal.” USA Today. 5 March 2004. Web. 2 August 2009.
Facebook is a social networking site that allows you to post picture, blogs, videos, and connect with long lost friends or classmates. Facebook is not the only social networking site there is also Twitter, MySpace, Classmate.com and several others. Though there are other sites Facebook is the number one social networking site having over 200 million registered users. Facebook began as a small website for high school and college students, now everyone has an account, from adults to children of a very young age; Facebook has become huge. As a Facebook user you can create groups, events, fan pages, and even play games while on the website.
ReplyDeleteFacebook is fun and everyone has one, but a very important thing to consider when joining social networking sites is the fact that the site is on the World Wide Web. The Internet nowadays is huge and there are more and more hackers that invade your privacy and try to steal identities every day. As well as businesses and schools that check individual’s accounts on certain websites to figure out what kind of person they are accepting into their college or their business. Is Facebook worth the risk?
In today’s society companies are not just giving people jobs based on their credentials, education and their interviews they are doing in depth research on their potential employees. When people are applying for a job they do not realize anything they do on the web can be a potential threat to them not getting the job. In many cases in the past few years companies have checked the Facebook accounts of potential employees and with what they found decided not to give the individual the job. The companies look at the pictures you take, the groups you join, as well as the general information that is on your page to determine if you are mature enough or suitable for the job. In 2007, According to MSNBC a recruiter for a job looked up the Facebook account of a certain applicant and was displeased with what he found. The article states that the recruiter found pictures of the candidate taking her shirt off at a parties on more than one occasion. The information that he found sealed her fate, she was denied the position. Is denying someone a job because of their Facebook account fair?
As previously stated, your social networking page or pages is on the World Wide Web. Individuals should be ethical and show that your morals are in tack when posting pictures or joining anything that is on the Internet. People forget that just cause your page is blocked doesn’t mean that your pictures can not be seen or there isn’t away to get around the blocks that you have set up. Posting pictures where you are nude, partially nude, drunk, or doing any other inappropriate acts can jeopardize your place in the business world or even getting into college or staying in college.
In 2005, a student from Fisher College was expelled for a group that he was an officer in that criticized the campus’s police sergeant. The student was “conspire[ing] to and damage[ing] the reputation of the sergeant.” This case shows that Facebook is not just for students and you can be seriously affected by the things that you do on your social networking site.
In my freshman year of college one of my professors told me and the rest of my classmates that we should be careful of what we put on Facebook that they are able to check and see our pictures as well as the groups we join. She told us don’t make the huge mistake and joining a stupid group on Facebook that can possible jeopardize a lot chances for you. Ethics is important in life, but even more important when the things you do can be seen by millions of people. People should think before they do things, just because you and your friends were having a good time at party, doesn’t mean you should post the pictures that can possible put you in a bad position. What you put on the web, in some aspects shows what can person you are and how you want people to see you. If you don’t want people to think you are a crazy drunk then don’t post picture that display as such.
Chaunta Scott
Chaunta Scott
ReplyDeleteWork Cited
Schweitzer, Sarah. "Fisher College expels student over website entries." The Boston Globe . 06 Oct 2005. 3 Aug 2009 http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/10/06/fisher_college_expels_student_over_website_entries/
Du, Wei. "Job candidates getting tripped up by Facebook." MSNBC. 14 Aug 2007. 3 Aug 2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20202935//
In today’s society we all should know right from wrong, right? Well it seems that there are still many people out there today that do not know the distinction from being ethically right or wrong. One of the biggest examples of the past year of a person being unethical is Bernard Madoff. According to an article written by CNN.com they say that the he is charged with 11 criminal counts of security fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The article also says that the official estimate of investor losses is more than $13 billion and could possibly be more. Mr. Madoff’s attorney says that they will not appeal his 150-year sentence. (Chernoff). Having being sentenced to such a long prison term in a weird way is an example of a person with no ethics. Knowing the severity of this case is truly disturbing to every American. Money is what makes the world go around and when people get greedy and don’t have any ethics it can be a recipe for disaster. Mr. Madoff was very aware of what he was doing and he knew it was wrong. He just thought that he wouldn’t get caught. The U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said, the severity of the sentence would be symbolic, important in a case where the "fraud was staggering" and the "breach of trust was massive." (Chernoff). When all of clients were giving him their money they trusted him. So it is just disturbing that he took so many people’s life savings and all of the money they had. They will probably never see any of that money ever again.
ReplyDeleteTo add to this disturbing story it was reported in a some of Mr. Madoff’s associates joined in his scam anyways knowing what was going on but did anyways because of the money they could potentially make (Affidavit). If it isn’t bad enough that Mr. Madoff took advantage of so many people but to have a group of people be in on the scam that is truly disturbing. It makes you ask the question, “What has the world come to today?” Just knowing that there are people out there that would take advantage of so many innocent people shows that this group of people have no moral respect for themselves and have no ethical conscious. The article also says that many “who ran the funds appear to have intentionally ignored red flags about how Madoff worked that anyone with their level of expertise would have noticed.” (Affadavit) Seeing what these people did to so many Americans is completely unethical and there is nothing that can justify those actions. They were extremely greedy and they acted unethically just to better themselves. In a way it was good that Bernard Madoff got sentenced to such a long time in jail because he needed to be made an example of so that America can hopefully feel a little safer with their money.
Work Cited
“Affidavit: Madoff associates knew of scheme, joined anyway.” CNN.com. 1 April 2009. Web. 2 August 2009.
Chernoff, Allan. “Madoff won’t appeal 150-year sentence, attorney says.” CNN.com. 9 July 2009. Web. 2 August 2009.
During the recent economic crisis, the government put “bail-out” plan into place. What this plan did was give and loan money to companies that had a large market to keep them from going bankrupt. The bad economy has put even the biggest companies in the world in horrible financial situations and something did need to be done. Yes it would cost the tax payers money in the long run but would save thousands per company their jobs. With the first stimulus package set in place under the Bush Administration, it was newly implemented and was almost like a test run. These companies that received this money had no rules or regulations established to handle this large amount of money. These companies were doing what most would call unethical things with this money.
ReplyDeleteMany of the companies such as Citigroup were in this category of unethical business tactics. In November of 2008, they announced that approximately 53 thousand jobs would be cut, which is a good amount of jobs and millions of dollars worth of salaries lost. This was to be expected at first until the company announced that it will be paying bonuses totaling about 300 million dollars. (Priya) The biggest ethical issue with this is the pay that the upper management receives. Many would consider the mess that the company is in to be their fault considering that they make the big money decisions that play a part in the company’s fate.
There are many personal stances on whether the government should have some control over what these companies that receive this money can do. There has been controversy over both ways of handling it. There was the way that Citigroup did it at first with no government control and now there is General Motors being appointed new upper management by the Obama Administration. This is shocking considering that there has not really been that much government involvement in a major corporation since around the Great Depression.
Works Cited
Priya, David. "Bailout Bonuses for Investment Bank Execs."CBS Evening News 17 Nov. 2008. CBS News. 3 Aug. 2009 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/17/ eveningnews/main4612647.shtml.
Stolberg, Sheryl; Bill Vlasic. " U.S. Lays Down Terms for Auto Bailout." The New York Times 30 Mar. 2009. 3 Aug. 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/ business/30auto.html?_r=1.
A few years ago in my hometown of Easley, South Carolina the upset of fraud hit home hard for many people. A local company called Carolina Investors solicited money from investors to lend to people with bad credit. This scam cost 8000 investors an estimated $275 Million dollars. This was hugely devastating in my hometown as elderly people who had put their life savings into this company were completely wiped out. Also, the non profit Carolina organization for the Blind lost over a million dollars. It was all anyone could talk about for weeks, and if you drove by their abandoned office it was with reverent silence for the deeds that had been done there.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing the effect that a few men had on the 8000 investors, mostly elderly people. It is unfortunate that the lessons of business ethics are learned in this manner. Morris, the head of the company claims innocence in the scandal that was the largest to hit South Carolina ever. Many people believed his innocence, claiming that he was just foolish. However, his "foolish" decisons cost hard working people their money, and the companies bankruptcy rocked the entire upstate. These events were linked to the Enron scandal that was noticed nationwide.
The ethical question really is raised in how these investors were marketed to. None of them were aware that their investments were extremely high risk, being loaned to people with bad credit, and high chance of not paying their money back. Perhaps the concept in itself was ethical, and even admirable: Loan money to people who cannot afford it by investments from investors. A Robin Hood idea of sorts. However, the catch lies in the fact that they did not let investors know their financial risk, and the unsecured investments were lost. It can be argued that the investors should have invested in legitimate and secure outlets, and I would agree. However, in a town like Easley people would stake their lives on someone's, "good name," especially someone who was born and raised as a state figure of honesty. The ethical decisons of these men to decieve the generation of investors that trusted them, was disgraceful and devestating to many.
These stories and many like it show the importance of remaining ethical in business. It is not worth hurting 8000 people, so that three people can live in luxury. This is a prime example of misguided ethics.
--Kelly Walker
SOURCE: USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/money/2004-02-05-homegold_x.htm