BA 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Securities Fraud, Accounting Scandals, Greenwashing

• School: Ohio University
• Department: Business Administration
• Course: BA 1100
• Professor: Tim Reynolds

Document Summary

Principles and standards that determine acceptable conduct in business. Acceptable behavior is determined by: the organization, the individual"s. A business"s obligation to maximize its positive impact and minimize its negative impact on society. Social responsibility and ethics are not the same: ethics refers to individual"s or work group"s decisions, social responsibility is the impact of the entire organizations activities on society. Sarbanes-oxley act: criminalized securities fraud and stiffened penalties for corporate fraud, enacted after the accounting scandals in the early 200s. Dodd-frank act: passed to offer consumers protection against complex and/or deceptive financial products, enacted after the most recent recession. Recent legal and ethical issues: subprime loans and foreclosures, accounting fraud, cybercrimes, deceptive advertising, unfair competitive practices. Learning to recognize and resolve ethical issues is a key step in evaluating ethical decisions. An identifiable problem, situation, or opportunity that requires a person to choose from among several actions that may be evaluated as right or wrong, ethical or unethical.