1. Ethics And Society Course
2. Ethics And Society Articles

Get this from a library! Canadian business and society: ethics, responsibilities and sustainability. [Robert W Sexty].

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1. Canadian Business and Society: Ethics and. Canadian Business and Society: Ethics and Responsibilities: Author: Robert W. Sexty: Contributor: Sexty Sexty: Edition: 2.
2. Canadian Business And Society Ethics &Amp; Responsibilities 2Nd Edition Pdf. Culture and Society 6 5 3 75 25 100 Paper. PwC Business School.

Learning Objectives. Know the three levels and six stages of moral development suggested by Kohlberg. Describe famous corporate scandals. Understand how Bill 198 of 2002 provides a check on corporate ethical behavior in Canada.

Know the dimensions of corporate social performance tracked by KLD. Stages of Moral Development How do ethics evolve over time? Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg suggests that there are six distinct stages of moral development and that some individuals move further along, or faster along, these stages than others (Kohlberg, 1981). Kohlberg’s six stages were grouped into three levels: (1) preconventional, (2) conventional, and (3) postconventional. The preconventional level of moral reasoning is very egocentric in nature, and moral reasoning is tied to personal concerns.

In stage 1, individuals focus on the direct consequences that their actions will have—for example, worry about punishment or getting caught. In stage 2, right or wrong is defined by the reward stage, where a “what’s in it for me” mentality is seen. At this conventional level of moral reasoning, morality is principally judged by comparing individuals’ actions with the expectations of society. In stage 3, individuals are conformity driven and act with the goal of fulfilling social roles. Parents that encourage their children to be good boys and girls use this form of moral guidance. In stage 4, the importance of obeying laws, social conventions, or other forms of authority to aid in maintaining a functional society is encouraged. You might witness encouragement under this stage when using a cell phone in a restaurant or when someone is chatting too loudly in a library.

The postconventional level, or principled level, occurs when morality is more than simply following social rules or norms. Stage 5 considers different values and opinions. Thus laws are viewed as social contracts that promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Following democratic principles or voting to determine an outcome is common when this stage of reasoning is invoked. In stage 6, moral reasoning is based on universal ethical principles. For example, the golden rule that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you illustrates one such ethical principle. At this stage, laws are grounded in the idea of right and wrong.

Thus individuals follow laws because they are just and not simply because they will be punished if caught or shunned by society. Consequently, with this stage, the concept of civil disobedience emerges; that individuals have a duty to disobey unjust laws. Corporate Scandals and Bill 198 In the 1990s and early 2000s, several corporate scandals were revealed in Canada that showed a lack of board vigilance, including Northern Telecom Limited, also known as Nortel. With the collapse of the Internet bubble, among other factors, Nortel stock price collapsed.

Market capitalization of Nortel declined from $398 billion to less than $5 billion, and more than 60,000 people were laid off. John Roth, CEO and member of the Nortel board of directors, was criticized after it was revealed that he cashed in his own stock options for a personal gain of $135 million in 2000 alone. In September 1991, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks was discovered in the act of hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel. In 2004, it was discovered that crackers (malicious hackers) gained almost complete access to Nortel’s systems. In spite of these findings, the breach was not properly addressed by the time the company started selling some of its assets in 2009. The Canadian federal government propped up Nortel with a $30 million loan, which outraged many Canadians who had already lost billions on Nortel on the stock market, yet would be asked for even more money to support Nortel through their taxes. Financial irregularities were also discovered at Nortel’s Health and Welfare Trust (HWT), including a finding that $100 million was missing, and that a $37 million loan to Nortel had not been paid back. The HWT was an unregistered trust maintained by Nortel to provide medical, dental, life insurance, long-term disability, and survivor income and pension transition benefits.

Until 2005, Nortel fully funded the disability insurance in its HWT. However, it is alleged that since then, the HWT breached their fiduciary duties to protect Nortel’s disabled employees and survivors of deceased employees by allowing Nortel to misdirect over $100 million from the HWT for purposes inconsistent with the terms of the HWT. In the United States, perhaps the most famous corporate scandal involves Enron, an energy firm whose executive antics were documented in the film The Smartest Guys in the Room. Enron used accounting loopholes to hide billions of dollars in failed deals. When their scandal was discovered, top management cashed out millions in stock options while preventing lower-level employees from selling their stock. The collective acts of Enron led many employees to lose all their retirement holdings, and many Enron execs were sentenced to prison.

Ethics And Society Course

These were far from isolated incidents. Analysis shows that many of the warning signs were not acted on by boards, or worse, were covered up by auditors whose job it was to ensure accuracy in public financial reporting. Major audit firms were also found to be in conflict of interest positions, but offering various non-auditing services to the same firms they were under contract to audit. In response, the U.S.

And Canadian governments passed sweeping new legislation with the hopes of restoring investor confidence while preventing future scandals. (See Figure 10.6 “Corporate Scandals.”) In the United States, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), was passed in 2002, significantly changing how public companies reported their financial standings. (It was named after Democratic Senator Paul Sarbanes and Republican Representative Michael Oxley, the sponsors of the bill.) The new approach greatly benefited shareholders and stock investors by bolstering transparency in fiscal reporting. In Canada, Ontario’s Bill 198 was an omnibus bill that contained several far-reaching reforms regarding governance of publicly traded firms in Canada. When Ontario passed Bill 198 in 2003, it essentially accomplished the same thing as SOX—in fact, it’s frequently referred to as the Canadian SOX (C-SOX).

This bill came out as a result of corporate scandals that shook investor confidence. It increased scrutiny of corporate governance amid growing concern about auditor independence and the disclosure of internal controls over financial reporting, notes a PricewaterhouseCoopers report (2004). The Ontario government introduced a piece of legislation called Keeping the Promise for a Strong Economy Act, and it was approved in 2002. Since Toronto is Canada’s largest stock market, this provincial legislation affected basically every Canadian company as well as every stock traded in Canada. In reality, the bill dealt broadly with a number of different government operation procedures and only a small part dealt with financial reporting. The changes that encouraged the creation of Sarbanes-Oxley Act were so sweeping that comedian Jon Stewart quipped, “Did Wall Street have any rules before this?

Can you just shoot a guy for looking at you wrong?” Despite the considerable merits of Sarbanes-Oxley, no legislation can provide a cure-all for corporate scandal. As evidence, the scandal by Bernard Madoff that broke in 2008 represented the largest investor fraud ever committed by an individual, estimated to be approximately $64.5 billion. But in contrast to some previous scandals that resulted in relatively minor punishments for their perpetrators, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison. For several years, Maclean’s magazine has partnered with Sustainalytics, a global leader in sustainability analysis, to select 50 leaders in corporate social responsibility—companies who know that doing good is just good business.

Exercises. How would your college or university fare if rated on the dimensions used by KLD?. Do you believe that executives will become more ethical after legislation such as C-SOX? References Kohlberg, L. Essays in moral development: Vol.

Ethics And Society Articles

The philosophy of moral development. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Bill 198-Overview. Retrieved from Rogers Media. (2014). Canada’s top 50 social responsibility programs.

Retrieved from Schectman, J. Good business.

Newsweek, 156, 50. (2012, May 14). What C-SOX Means for Canadian Companies. Resolver Inc. Retrieved from Wikipedia Organization. Retrieved from.