Essay Example on Enron: Lack of Ethics & Transparency Exposed

Introduction

Enron Corporation had clearly fallen out of ethical boundaries controls. Such as lack of clear goal agreed upon by all shareholders, this is made clear internally when we see the chief finance officer creating creative financing instruments to manipulate the share price and as a scheme to enrich himself at the expense of the company.

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Further, Enron lacks ethical accountability and transparency; this is made manifest in secret dealing geared towards manipulating stock price at all cost, behind the shareholders back. Also, we see Enron fail in the ethical path of outsourcing of managers; they fall below the ethical requirement for corporations to source staff that are keen on delivering on the mandate of the company. By choosing Skill, Enron failed on the moral obligation of choosing someone competent. Skill proved incompetent by oversees malpractices in Enron corporations.

Separation of Children Policy

Cases of ethical failures continue to pile and increase day in day out. A recent example is the case of separation of children from their families in the southern borders of our country (Dreby 2015). If a family is caught arriving in the US without following the right due process, the parents are taken into federal jails, and the children are kept under the care of the US Department of Human Services and health. The policy of separation of children from parents creates a conflict between policies and law. In such a case, where there is a conflict of policies and law, the record keepers have the ethical requirements to uphold what is morally right, depending on their moral disposition.

Recent Examples of Ethical Cases

Further, there are more cases of ethical issues in the management of corporations, which include; use of social media. Social media has brought about ethical issues in the line of free speech. Platforms such as Facebook have started creating ethical codes upon which users of the platform are supposed to subscribe (Godwin 2019). Companies are torn in between whether or not it is right to fire someone based on what they post on social media platforms. The conflict of ethical boundaries is widened when an employee's actions in social media could be considered as disloyal to the company.

Additionally, there are ethical issues in the line of discrimination and harassment in the places of work. The bias could be racial, sexual, or in wage disparity. Employers are caught in problems along these lines of segregations more often than not, in cases where such issues are not dealt with fairness and open-mindedness. A company could get caught in the ethical failures problems. Harassment and segregation problems could tarnish a good reputation of a company both nationally and internationally.

AOIR Committee

A committee consisting of researchers, ethicists from various countries formed a committee with the aim of ensuring that internet usage is professional and ethical. The committee developed an AOIR internet usage ethical guideline(Franzke, Bechmann 2020) The committee produced three reports consisting of the guidelines upon which researchers, students, and academic bodies could refer to in order to confine themselves in the right ethical and moral boundaries of internet usage.

Conclusion

In conclusion, for there to be a dynamic ethical culture in the corporations, there is a need to have clear, noble ethical goals endorsed by all stakeholders a culture of accountability and transparency need to be upheld by parties in the corporation. Ethical practices help in ensuring smooth interrelationships of parties in the company. Good interrelations of stakeholders of a corporation help grow a company's reputation.

References

Cox, R. J. (2008). Archival ethics: The truth of the matter. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(7), 1128-1133.

Dreby, J. (2015). US immigration policy and family separation: The consequences for children's well-being. Social Science & Medicine, 132, 245-251.

Franzke, A. S., Bechmann, A., Ess, C. M., & Zimmer, M. (2020). Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0.

Godwin, M. (2019) A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics. Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2019: