1. Opening Decision Point - pg 108
Creating an Ethics Program
Imagine that you work in the Human Resources department of
your company. Your CEO has asked the HR department to
develop an ethics program for the firm, and you have been
assigned responsibility for creating it. You have been asked to
report back to your CEO in two weeks with a draft version of a
code of ethics for the company, a summary of other elements
that the ethics program will include, and a proposal for how you
will be able to assess whether the program is working. Your
CEO also asks that you come prepared to explain what role she
can play in promoting ethics and to ensure the success of the
ethics program.
You begin your research and quickly find that there are a
number of potentially desirable and somewhat overlapping
outcomes of effective ethics programs:
1. Discovery of unethical/illegal behavior and reduction of
meltdowns, resulting in avoidance or reduction of fines/criminal
charges (also applies to several of the items included below):
2. Awareness of ethical and legal issues.
3. A resource for guidance and advice.
4. Accurate reports of wrongdoing.
5. Greater customer loyalty, resulting in increased sales and
better reputation.
6. Incorporation of values in decision processes.
7. Greater employee commitment and loyalty to the
organization, resulting in higher productivity.
8. Satisfaction of external and internal stakeholder needs (all
resulting in more effective financial performance). Play the role
of this HR person in several different types of businesses: a
fast-food restaurant, an automobile dealership, a retail store
selling consumer electronics, a government agency, and a large
international corporation.1
• List the issues you think should be addressed in a code of

2. ethics.
• Other than a code of ethics, what other elements would you
include in an ethics program?
• How will you define “success”? Are there any facts that you
will need to gather to make this judgment?
• How would you measure success along the way? How will you
measure whether your ethics program is “working” before you
reach any end objective?
• Whom will you define as your primary stakeholders?
• What are the interests of your stakeholders in your program
and what are the impacts of your program on each stakeholder?
How might the measurement of the program’s success influence
the type of people attracted to the firm or people who are most
motivated within your organization?
• How will you answer the CEO’s questions about her own role
in promoting ethics?
Opening Decision Point Revisited – pg 144
Creating an Ethics Program
You have developed and implemented an ethics program. But
how do you know whether the ethics program is “working”?
How will you define “success”? Whom do you define as your
primary stakeholders? What are their interests in your program
and what are the impacts of your program on each stakeholder?
How could you modify your program to ensure even greater
success? This Decision Point asks you to define the “success”
of an ethics program, an extraordinary challenge even for those
in this business for many years. One way to look at the inquiry
would be to consider the measures by which you might be
willing to be evaluated, since this is your project. Overall, you
will need to explore whether there are pressures in your
environment that encourage worker misconduct. You will need
to consider whether there are systematic problems that
encourage bad decisions. Have you identified all the major
legal, ethical, and reputational risks that your organization
faces, and have you determined the means by which to
remediate those risks? Because you will encourage the

3. performance that you plan to measure, it is important to
determine whether you will be most concerned with the end
results or consequences or with the protection of particular
values articulated by your program or codes. If you measure
outcomes alone, you will have a singular focus on the
achievement of those outcomes by decision makers. If you
measure the protection of rights alone, you may be failing to
consider the long-range implications of decisions in terms of
their costs and benefits to the firm. According to the Ethics
Resource Center, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are rarely
applied to large corporations today. Those guidelines apply only
to decisions by courts, and it is more common for cases against
large corporations to be settled by means of Deferred
Prosecution Agreements or Non-Prosecution Agreements.57 On
the other hand, ethics programs seem to be having an effect
internally. A 2013 study found that corporate employees in the
United States are witnessing record-low levels of wrongdoing;
and these levels have continued to drop since 2007. However,
while employees’ willingness to report wrongdoing has
declined, some of that decline is due, in part, to high retaliation
rates that discourage reporting.58 To provide some context to
this exploration, consider which offenses are most likely to lead
to a fine for an organization. In 2014, the USSC received
information on 162 organizations sentenced. Of those, 25.9
percent had been charged with fraud; 13 percent were charged
with environmental offenses related specifically to water; 13
percent were charged with import/export offenses.
Approximately 71 percent were required to pay a fine (or a fine
plus restitution), and another 17.9 percent were required to pay
restitution only. The average restitution payment imposed was
almost $1.2 million, and the average fine imposed was more
than $27.5 million. The average fine for cases involving fraud
was more than $46.5 million, while the average fine in public
corruption cases was $41.7 million, and in antitrust cases, the
average was $65.6 million. 59

4. Business Ethics – Week 2 Assignment
The Corporate Culture
Read Decision Point: Creating an Ethics Program, pages 108
and 144
Choose one of the following companies (or any company that
has been in the press) and write a 2-3 page, APA style critical
analysis of the ethical issues involved in the case.
Legal Cases:
· Tyco
· Imclone
· Global Crossing
· WorldCom
· Adelphia
· NYSE and Richard Grasso
· Merrill Lynch
· Health South
· Marsh and McLennan
· Al Dunlap and Sunbeam
The analysis should include the following:
· A short description of case
· Identification of the ethical issues involved (what was the
alleged ethical wrong done, and why is/was it wrong?)
· A statement, in their own opinion, of whether it was wrong or
not, and more importantly, why?
· Thoughts on what could have been done to avoid the problem
– do we need more laws & government regulation? What
internal controls might have prevented this situation?
· Was the problem more a matter of individuals gone wrong, or
was it more systemic and organizational?
Provide 3-5 APA style references both inline and at the end of
the paper to support your analysis. Please write in 3rd person.

5. Note: This is your opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge
of the week’s theory linked to personal opinion and outside
evidence.
Your paper should reflect scholarly writing and current APA
standards. Please include citations to support your ideas.