Why Do Business Ethics Scandals Keep Recurring in America?

抄録

We cannot seem to put the wave of corporate scandals behind us. Everyday brings reports of yet another scandal. In some cases, we are seeing repeat offenders. Nortel, once valued at nearly $375 billion saw its value collapse when the dot.com bubble burst. The company recorded a loss of over $27 billion for 2001. Much of Nortel's vaunted value was apparently a mirage. The company hired Frank Dunn to manage its turnaround, only to have to fire Dunn and other top executives in 2004 for allegedly cooking the books. Nortel had to restate its 2003 earnings. In the summer of 2003, Citigroup settled with the SEC for its involvement in the Enron fiasco. Then, in 2004, Japanese regulators forced the closure of Citigroup's private bank in Tokyo after discovering the operation lacked basic internal controls and may have been involved in money laundering.1 Although there is some indication that earnings quality has improved after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)-net income has moved back into line with free cash flow and accruals have declined as a portion of total assets-the change may have been due more to the effects of recession than to a sudden upswing of morality at firms.2 Or perhaps the improvement is due to some companies' choice to de-list from the various financial exchanges rather than comply with the new law. In any case, restatements of earnings are soaring: firms are continuing, at a record pace, to restate earnings, even those reported post-SOX. Many attempts have been made to analyze the cause of particular scandals (e.g., Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth). This paper examines why business ethics scandals keep recurring, analyzing some possible factors that have been overlooked by legal scholars and ethicists.