1.) Determine the Facts Tobisha, a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation “that has its hand in everything from installing power lines to supplying iPhone parts (Du),” recently found itself in a major ethics scandal, as the business was discovered overstating its profits by nearly $2 billion over the course of the past seven years. This accounting scandal came to light in February 2015 when the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission suspected accounting irregularities within the Tobisha Corporation and launched an in-depth investigation. The Japan Times explained the report and what it found:
The four-member committee looked into Toshiba’s accounting practices from fiscal 2009 to 2014 and found a series of “inappropriate” accounting entries that showed a staggering $1.2 billion net profit. The report said the firm’s top executives, including Tobisha President Hisao Tanaka and his predecessors Atsutoshi Nishida and Norio Sasaki, were involved in the manipulation and there were no internal systems in place to stop them. The report said the priority for the presidents was to secure profits for each quarter, and thus set high targets, demanding their subordinates improve the company’s results. The business culture at Toshiba did not allow lower-level managers “to go against the bosses,” it said. (Nagata)
The ways by which Toshiba manipulated its’ accounting numbers differed by division. For example, “the report said the infrastructure division purposely
The objective of this report was to analyze Vivint-Smart Home Solutions’ performance in terms of organisational culture, management and leadership styles and motivation and how organizations have been affected by them. In this report, we identified that Vivint has an association of Hierarchy and Market organisational culture, relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership styles and servant leadership style. Moreover, it demonstrated that Vivint has intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. These resulted in successful and unsuccessful practices of Vivint based on the Undercover Boss TV series based on three aspects which have been mentioned above. In addition, this report critiqued the Undercover Boss method for discovering the problems within an organisation and recommended other processes for uncovering issues. The results showed that organisational culture, management and leadership styles as well as motivation played significant roles in Vivint’s performance. Recommendations have been made to improve the unsuccessful practices of Vivint such as training managers to be empathic problem solver, examining and updating the working condition regularly, bonus for employees who give feedback voluntarily on management processes and offering fund to employees who are in need of support.
And while anecdotal here, Kerry Heitz, a professional colleague preparing to exit after many years had been the epicenter of the leak and the unfolding firestorm in this tale of woe. It turns out that during a casual conversation with Christine over coffee, Kerry decided to seize the moment in this parallel universe. Being one of those trusted fiduciaries, he saw a pattern of significant abuses and took the unprecedented opportunity to propose linking executive bonuses to financial performance. Whether it was naivety or just trying to do right by the company, he should have realized that Christine had been kept uninformed by design. In any event, it didn’t take long before Kerry realized the error of his ways as the topic of that conversation eventually made its way back to Bill where it was not favorably received
Armstrong and Dennis R. Balch in the Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, Volume 18, Number 2, 2015 they interview two former Chief Financial Officers, Aaron Beam and Weston Smith to conduct qualitative assessment using the Banality of Wrongdoing Model. During the assessment Mr. Beam and Mr. Smith were asked fourteen questions to gauge “the culture of competition, ends-biased leadership, missionary zeal, legitimizing myth, the corporate cocoon, banality of wrongdoing and greed.” The authors of this study concluded that Mr. Beam and Mr. Smith did not attempt to justify or rationalize their behaviors or their part in unethical practices and accounting fraud but rather admitted to being fully aware of their actions and knew the ramifications of doing such. Rather than trying to justify their behaviors it became more of anxiety and stress to both of them, however they “used the defense that they were more or less forced into the behavior by the Chief Executive Officer, Richard
Furthermore, HMC employed a compensation system that not only helped to attract and retain some of the most adept portfolio managers in the market, but also permitted to align the economic objectives of portfolio managers with those of the university. In other words, the structure and compensation system of HMC was designed specifically to achieve its objectives and to maintain the real long-term value of Harvard’s endowment
How did pressures for financial performance contribute to an organizational culture that tried to manipulate quarterly sales and to influence investors?.
Yielding too much power results in greater temptation to cheat the system. In light of the shocking truth regarding the Enron scandal and dissemination of one of the “Big Five” accounting firms, Arthur Andersen, more policies and procedures are in place to separate duties and ensure that no single individual can destroy or steal from an entire company. One of the most well-known accounting litigation that was formulated after the Enron scandal is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 which force companies to pay close attention to internal controls (Nobles, Mattison, & Matsumura, 2014). Internal controls allows a company to encourage accuracy and reliability of data sent through various individuals responsible for the financial well-being of the
Canadian based company, Saralyn Mills, is in need of a new marketing strategy to repair the current shortage of sales in Quebec, Canada. According to the case study, the Quebec and Ontario markets account for 69 percent of the company’s sales in Canada. Currently, Saralyn Mills does not have an effective strategy in place for the market of Quebec. The company’s current goal is to implement a global standardization strategy, which is focused on keeping a set marketing strategy the same for every location. It is up to the marketing manager, Nicole Vichon, to come up with a new and separate marketing plan for Quebec. Even though this would be a major policy change from the current global strategy of Saralyn Mills, case facts prove it could be very effective.
One of America’s largest forest products/paper firms with sales of $6.5Billion in 1983 and a net income of $105 million. The case study revolves around Atlantic Corporation’s intention to add linerboard capacity. In order to achieve this goal, they started looking at viable solutions, including purchasing and acquiring mill and box plants instead of through construction and fabrication of new plants and equipment. This included the possible acquisition of Royal Paper’s “crown jewels”, that is, the Monticello mill and the corrugated box plants.
The above formula isolates free cash flows to the firm from earnings before interest and tax (EBIT). It can be noted that FCFF are after tax (1-T) but prior to interest expense. This initial overstatement of due tax is by design; the tax deductibility of interest payments will be accounted for when incorporating the after-tax cost of debt in the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) to determine the present value of free cash flows.
Large corporations such as Wal-Mart or Home Depot often come under criticism for putting mom-and-pop shops out of business. While this may be a valid criticism, the consumers neglect to realize that they play the biggest part in shutting these businesses down. Consumers across the country are always looking for the best deals or the lowest prices, and in most cases the larger corporations are where products can be found at the lowest price. Many small business owners and the populations of small towns dislike large corporations moving into the area because they believe it negatively effects the local
This paper describes the case of Olympus, a Japanese manufacturer of optic equipment, at which in early 2012 a scandal was uncovered which was soon dubbed to be one of the largest loss-concealment schemes of Japan. In the 1990’s, Olympus incurred significant losses on financial investments made. These were subsequently hidden with the aid of investment companies by shifting the investments around. In the 2000’s, these losses were to be repaid by paying exorbitant merger and acquisition fees to these investment companies. After newly-appointed CEO Michael Woodford blew the whistle on these frauds, the company got into trouble. Our research into the events leading to this
After analyzing the Toshiba CSR report from both 2014 and 2015, it becomes clear that the unethical corporate culture that allowed for this scandal to take place was the result of under-developed, utilitarian-structured CSR policies. As a point of reference, I would classify pre-2015 Toshiba as having some, but not all of the
A multitude of choices made by executives at WorldCom led to the ultimate demise of the company as it was previously known, the employees and their livelihoods’, and the trust of the American people. In a time when corporations fail to set ethical standards and provide transparency to investors, how do we change corporate culture on a national level? By analyzing choices made to improve stock prices and company image that ultimately result in failure-- we can guide
While it is not a simple matter to pinpoint what exactly should be "fixed," the Toshiba case
Introduction: This case study is about a Malaysian company, named Padi-cepat. This company has business of food, beverages and baking products. This business units offer different products which are marketed separately because they require different technology and marketing strategies. Performance is judged on a segment’s profit before tax and interest. The CEO of the company named Raja Norman Effendi has become concerned about the future profitable growth of this company because the company faced many problems and challenges in the market. In this case study we discuss about the four challenges that Padi- cepat is likely to face and discuss the solution for two of them that how they can overcome. In second step of case study we discuss to formulate a human resource plan that would be linked up with Padi-cepat’s strategic plan. In the third step of case study i discuss the different approaches and global staffing. I also discuss about the importance of expatriate staff for the company named Padi-cepat. Then i discuss the need of understanding the culture of the nations where Padi-cepat decides to locate. In the last part i discuss the meaning of labour relations and its importance to Pedi-cepat.