The purpose of this paper is to evaluate ethics in accounting and financial decision making. I will describe how legal issues, ethics, and corporate social responsibility impact management within the organization.
We may seem to be distant from the very high profile corporate ethics issues fo today. Today we hear about Marta Stewart, Scott Sullivan (CFO of World Com), and the family business bungling of Adelphia. We only hear about these cases because they are high profile cases that crossed way over the ethical boundaries of good business and corporate social responsibility, and became criminal acts. These criminal acts defrauded individual employees of funds they thought where safe, and defrauded our government out of tax dollars. No one knows what drives these individuals but it is an uncomfortable trend to see when managers on the corporate ladder can put themselves above the law.
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