Ethical Agreements

Attorney New and CPA rube were approached by several entrepreneurs from Los Vegas and Chicago to start a commercial bank in a small town near the border of California, Arizona and Mexico. The funding was to come from gambling and from the sale of illicit drugs coming over the border. Attorney New was to draw up the charter and get approval from the banking authorities for a license for the bank. CPA Rube was to develop a chart for the interest rates, etc.

A. Discuss the ethics of this business arrangement.

This arrangement is not only unethical, it is criminal. In any ethical analysis of situations involving crime and business, Mitchell, Daniels, Hopper, Falvy and Ferris (1996) have argued that the best approach is to understand what is producing the decision to become engaged in such activity. According to the authors, such situations (e.g., funding a bank with illegal monies) arise from three sources. These are: (1) deficiencies in moral character, (2) a lack of clarity regarding expectations and standards describing illegal behavior, and (3) the presence of reinforcements and punishments contingent on these behaviors.

A key ethical question here is: Which of the foregoing sources might be creating the ethics of this arrangement? It seems reasonable to state the strictures against starting up a bank that is funded by gambling and drug monies are clear. Therefore, this source is probably not the primary factor that would lead to involvement in the situation. Th

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as to Congress) that banks are meeting their fair share of society's needs and doing so in an ethical manner. The consequences of unethical shortcuts, policies and practices has been discussed by Killberg (1990) who reports that such actions often not only undermine public confidence, they are like a cancer that eats away at the morale and spirit of the company itself. Killberg also makes the point that the business profession in general and the banking profession in particular rests on principles of objectivity and integrity. When objectivity and integrity are absent, even in a small way, Killberg (1990) states that the stability of the company begins to erode both within and without due to poor employee morale and lowering of public confidence. In other words, the decision to have bank tellers provide customers with information about avoiding federal tax scrutiny through limiting the amount of their deposits is unwise from a very practical standpoint as well as from an ethical/moral standpoint. C) Suppose bank tellers intend to scrutinize customers' records and to disclose financial data. Develop a Code of Ethics for all bank employees including tellers and officers. The foregoing behavior is strictly prohibited by f

Category: Government - E