Some executives justifying lying to protect trade secrets, or to maintain a competitive advantage that could affect their ability to remain profitable. There are those, however, who feel that lying calls an individual's·or a company's·integrity into question. If a company is willing to lie about its product, or its plans, or in its advertising, what else does it lie about? This research examines two recent high-profile instances of company executives caught lying, and concludes that lying by company officials cannot be justified.
Martha Stewart was convicted of lying to the government under the False Statements Act. When Congress decided to pursue the case against Stewart, some members announced that the case was more about the integrity of Congressional investigations rather than the specifics of the insider trading case against Stewart (Ramey 2).
Stewart continues to deny that she lied about the timing of her trades, but the motivation to lie in this instance could come from several sources. Stewart is CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and hosted a television show as well as headed up a design empire that included products sold at Kmart and a magazine. An insider trading scandal that would result in jail time or fines could have severely hurt her publicly held company, and this would provide incentive to lie about the deal. More selfishly, Stewart might have lied about the insider trading in an effort to avoid going to prison; since she was served time in jail regardless, this tactic would not seem to be successful (Greenberg & Swarts n.p.).
Where Martha Stewart was convicted for lying about a specific transaction involving less than $100,000, Enron represents a situation where an entire corporation was tainted with the image of lying in order to protect the financial assets of the company, and which used other companies·including Arthur Andersen·to bolster its falsehoods. Enron executives are only now b...