Resisting Corporate Corruption - 9781118208557

This text’s objective is to teach business ethics in a manner very different from the conceptual/legal frameworks which dominate graduate schools. The book offers 25 case studies that cover a full range of business practice, controls and ethics issues. The cases are framed to instruct students in early identification of ethics issues, and how to work such problems effectively within corporate organizations. By pursuing these case studies, students should emerge with a “practical toolkit” that better enables them to follow their moral compass. The cases provide examples of how executives can embed more ethical approaches inside alternative business strategies, redirect pressure and intimidation to parties better positioned to resist, and use the firm’s controls structure to counteract corrupt practices. Specific cases take up the circumstances of whistleblowers and the changing protections afforded by recent laws. Fourteen case studies examine Enron’s crossing of various ethical lines from 1987-2001. Eleven new cases examine key financial crisis moments at Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Interpretive essays discuss the nature of sound financial controls systems, the lessons of Enron, and the extent to which the financial crisis shows Enron’s issues to be unresolved.