Business Ethics Case Studies

Case Study: Corporate Social Responsibility of Starbucks

Starbucks is the world’s largest and most popular coffee company. Since the beginning, this premier cafe aimed to deliver the world’s finest fresh-roasted coffee. Today the company dominates the industry and has created a brand that is tantamount with loyalty, integrity and proven longevity. Starbucks is not just a name, but a culture.

It is obvious that Starbucks and their CEO Howard Shultz are aware of the importance of corporate social responsibility. Every company has problems they can work on and improve in and so does Starbucks. As of recent, Starbucks has done a great job showing their employees how important they are to the company.… Read the rest

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Case Study: Scam of the Century – Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi Scheme

In the world of finance, there are a select amount of manipulative masterminds that sit on a throne of lies. Those who commit these white-collar crimes take advantage of institutions and all classes of people. Ultimately, the enormity of these crimes brings ruin and chaos to the lives of those affected. In this manner, Bernard Lawrence Madoff is just one of these individuals who ran history’s largest Ponzi scheme.

To begin, Bernie Madoff was born in Queens, New York in 1938. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Hofstra University in 1960 and shortly thereafter started his own firm known as Bernard L.… Read the rest

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Examples of Unethical Behavior by Organizations

Unethical Behavior by Organizations

Anything that a businessman can do in the best interest of society is to be a good businessman. It means that they should try to maximize the profit which is the ultimate target of any business. Here is the point when businessmen think that instead of wasting time and resources with ethics they should focus on finance, marketing and business operations. As long as a business is operating within the rules, the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profit with the use of business resources. Concisely it can be said that remain in open and free competition without being involved in fraud or deception.… Read the rest

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The Lessons from Enron: The Importance of Proper Internal Controls

The events were finally resulting the filing for bankruptcy in December 2001, started way much before fraud at Enron could be even suspected.  Andersen played a major role in the collapse of Enron.  Andersen failed two times regarding audit issues just a few years short time before the collapse of Enron, at Waste Management in 1996 and at Sunbeam in 1997. The two audit failures mentioned above should have been huge warning signs for Andersen to protect itself against another client failure but what they had to face regarding Enron was worse than they ever had.  Some internal memos at Andersen made it clear that several conflicts existed between the auditors and the audit committee of Enron.  … Read the rest

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Case Study: British Petroleum and Corporate Social Responsibility

British Petroleum known today as BP Amoco is a petroleum industry based in London. It is recognized as one of the top four oil and petroleum companies throughout the world. The company started in 1901 when William Knox D’Arcy was given the permission by the Shah of Persia to explore the land for oil and founded one in May 1908. Because of this discovery, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was established so as to expose these findings. The company has grown gradually because of this as World War I is happening; the British Government shows intense interest to the company which became the source of fuel oil of Royal Navy during WWI.… Read the rest

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Case Study: Bre-X Scandal – The $6 Billion Gold Fraud

The Bre-X scandal is the perfect example of a true fraud that results from dishonest and deceitful business ethics, morals, and principles. The Bre-X scandal is considered to be the biggest mining and gold scandal of all time, and one of the biggest stock scandals in Canadian history. The Bre-X scandal significantly damaged the Canadian Financial Markets and caused substantial reductions in consumer buying and trading confidence, which caused a considerable amount of damage to the Canadian economy. Subsequent to the collapse of Bre-X in 1997, its stocks and shares became worthless and left investors with significant losses.

The Bre-X scandal began in March 1993, subsequent to the company purchasing a large mining site in Busang, Indonesia (on Borneo).… Read the rest

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