Assignment

Ethical Misconducts in Business organizations

Submitted to
Dr. Shoaib Asim

Submitted by
NAME
AOUN ALI AKBAR
Roll#
B.B.F.E-19-16
Program
B.B.A (B&F) EVENING
Semester 5TH
 Ethical Misconducts in Business organizations
Enron
Enron faced an ethical accounting scandal in 2001 after using “mark-to-market” accounting to fake
their profits and misused special purpose entities, or SPEs. Enron worked to make their losses
seem less than they actually were, and “cooked the books” to make their income look much higher
than it was.

Enron stock plummeted after the news got out, and the SEC began an investigation.

That ethics investigation lead to jail time for many Enron executives, and their accounting firm
Arthur Anderson lost all of their clients and eventually was dissolved. Enron filed for bankruptcy,
and new laws were introduced based on this scandal to prevent similar situations. This is a case
where business ethics means that honesty and full transparency is what companies and consumers
should expect.

Tyson foods

Tyson’s slaughterhouses kill over two billion birds and mammals every year. To put this in
perspective, a total of about nine billion birds and mammals are killed in the US every year.

Environmental Pollution

Tyson has been found guilty of criminal pollution on multiple occasions. For example, in Missouri
in 2003, Tyson pled guilty to 20 felonies and paid $7.5 million for Clean Water Act violations.
(“Tyson Pleads Guilty to 20 Felonies and Agrees to Pay $7.5 Million for Clean Water Act
Violations”)

In 2004, Tyson was one of six companies to pay a $7.3 million fee to the city of Tulsa, OK, to
settle charges that the use of chicken waste as fertilizer had polluted Tulsa’s main source of
drinking water. In 2009, Tyson paid a $4.1 million fine for polluting the Missouri River.
Treatment of Animals: Policies

Unlike many of their competitors, and most of the largest buyers, Tyson has not adopted the
leading animal welfare policies. They have not banned gestation crates for pigs, have not abolished
battery cages for egg-laying hens, and have not adopted a slower-growing broiler policy.
They justify this by saying they don’t control their independent contractors. They have also refused
to adopt Controlled Atmosphere Killing (CAK) for birds.

Richemont

Richemont Race Discrimination Case

Cheryl Spragg, an employee of Richemont (UK), which owns luxury brands including Cartier and
Montblanc, was spied on by her employer, denied the opportunity to progress within the company
and was bullied by HR and other staff members as a result of her skin colour.

Following a back injury, Richemont placed Cheryl under close surveillance for a number of days,
following her to a wedding and even receiving images of her home and garden. Undoubtedly, this
act was unnerving, intimidating and upsetting for her.

Cheryl was also refused internal progression on the basis that she was black and had applied for
the same post on three different occasions, with all three of the recruitment decisions being made
by the same people. It was found that the company had a preference for white Europeans and the
judge ruling in Cheryl’s claim against race discrimination in the workplace agrees that this was an
act of direct discrimination since there was a lack of transparency and properly structured processes
for scoring, marking and record-keeping as well as a complete absence of interview records. The
HR team had no equality and diversity training and there were no black staff members at a senior
level or on the HR team.

In addition, Cheryl had been subject to bullying when other staff members refused to enter a lift
with her which was found as a violation of her dignity. These employees were said to have laughed
and pulled faces when Cheryl held the lift door open for them – they walked straight passed and
waited for another lift to come. This incident meets the very definition of harassment under
the Equality Act 2010.
When Cheryl complained to the HR department about the various events which she considered to
be discriminatory, she was told to look for a new job and was accused of causing her colleagues
distress. She was even told in an email from the HR team that she wasn’t the only ‘black member
of staff’ within her team and no other racism allegations had been raised in the past.

After the judge heard Cheryl’s case and considered the evidence, she won her claim and was
awarded compensation for the traumatic and humiliating experience

Fox news

Fox News Agrees to $1 Million Fine for Violating Human Rights Law

Fox News effectively admitted to a pattern of misconduct and has agreed to pay a civil
penalty in New York

Despite Fox News’ claims to have repaired the company’s toxic workplace culture since the firing
of founder and chairman Roger Ailes in July 2016, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has effectively
admitted to ongoing misconduct that includes sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation
against victimized employees, and has agreed to pay a million-dollar fine for what New York
City’s Commission on Human Rights called “a pattern of violating of the NYC Human Rights
Law.”

The settlement agreement, reached last week with the human rights commission, contains the
largest-ever financial penalty assessed in the agency’s six-decade history, and also requires Fox
News to remove mandatory confidential arbitration clauses from the contracts of on-air talent
along with other employees and contributors for a period of four years when they file legal claims
under the city’s human-rights law outside of the company’s internal process.

It “also demands immediate changes to policies surrounding reporting sexual harassment,

retaliation, training, and compliance with the NYC Human Rights Law,” according to a statement
from the commission, which added: “The Commission will monitor the network on a quarterly
basis for a period of 2 years to ensure compliance.”
Among the policy changes required by the Commission, the network has agreed to provide all
employees with a clear definition of “retaliation” and training for bystanders to intervene in
incidents and to properly report any witnessed misconduct.

The Commission said Fox News’ million-dollar civil penalty was based on the maximum fine of
$250,000 for each of four violations cited in the settlement agreement—“a figure reserved for
willful and wanton violations of the law.” The statement added, “The Commission ascertained that
a pattern and practice of violations took place at Fox.”

The Commission said it began its investigation of Fox News in July 2016 amid the bombshell
news accounts of Ailes’ workplace sexual misconduct with female employees in the aftermath of
Carlson’s lawsuit. Ailes, who left the network with a $40-million severance package and briefly
advised the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, died less than a year later, at age 77, in May
2017. The Commission ultimately filed its formal complaint against Fox in December 2018.

“FOX News Media has worked tirelessly to completely change the company culture over the last
five years. Under the leadership of CEO Suzanne Scott, the network has implemented annual,
mandatory in-person harassment prevention training, created an entirely new reporting structure,
more than tripled the size of our HR footprint, started quarterly company meetings and mentoring
events, as well as implemented a zero-tolerance policy regarding workplace misconduct for which
we engage outside independent firms to handle investigations,” the network added in a statement.
“No other company has implemented such a comprehensive and continuous overhaul, which,
notably, earned FOX News Media recognition as a 'Great Place to Work' for the first time in its
existence, a testament to the many cultural changes that Ms. Scott has instituted during her tenure
as CEO.”