Business Leaders: Aggressive and Unethical

6 Pages 1445 Words

Business Leaders: Aggressive and Unethical

In October of 2003, Roderick M. Kramer wrote an article entitled, “The Harder They Fall”. In it, he lists some of the more infamous fraudulent CEO’s of recent times like Kenneth Lay of Enron and Bernard Embers of WorldCom. Their scandals have reached a level of global recognition that the name Enron and WorldCom can now be used as a slang term for fraud or dishonesty. This article focuses more specifically on why a CEO would become a criminal rather than highlighting the actual deceitful deeds that these CEO’s committed. These top executives were smart enough and aggressive enough to achieve ultimate levels in their careers, yet somehow, they were not able to resist the temptation of greed and more power. Kramer suggests that this behavior is unusual for these people in normal circumstances and that fraud committing CEO’s are suffering from a “lapse in professional judgment” (Kramer, 3)
The major problem in businesses, with these cases of fraud, is that there is no real incentive to follow standard protocol and codes of ethics. If an employee does his or her job “by-the-book” unfortunately, they might slip through the cracks and go unnoticed for their moral and ethical efforts. However, if someone were to bend the rules or push the envelope, it is very possible that something amazing could be accomplished. Of course, this achievement would bring in a great deal of attention to that person and they would be noted as an aggressive out-of-the-box thinker, as long as the bosses didn’t know that there was any mishandling of the companies rules. But, this brings up another point. What if an employee’s boss knew that he or she was bending the rules? If his or her performance was exceptional and benefiting the company and the boss directly, perhaps, these white lies are often overlooked. When these lies or misconduct is overlooked, it is an invitation to a more deceiving and...