business ethics discussion board

DISCUSSION BOARD: Business Ethics

Over the past several years there have been a growing number of major ethical breeches by major companies both in the U.S. and in other countries. A few examples include: Wells Fargo (setting up accounts for their clients without their authorization); General Motors (hiding the problem of bad ignition switches on millions or cars for about 10 years); Volkswagen (cheating on emission tests to meet government standards); Takata (putting known defective air bags in millions of cars); Uber (paying one of their IT employees to not report a data breech that affected millions of customer records); Kobe Steel (falsified inspection records for a number of years on aluminum and steel that did not meet required specifications, and shipped it to many customers); and Chrysler (falsifying auto sales records to show growth in sales that did not exist).

Analyze these cases to determine some of the major reasons why these types of unethical breeches occur in major corporations, and make some recommendations regarding what can be done to reduce the frequency and severity. Look at Corporate Governance, CEO reward systems, Legal Systems, and Consumer behavior to see how these affect ethical behavior and what could be changed to reduce it.