Barnes & Noble Inc. is the world’s largest bookstore and a publicly traded company listed on the NYSE under the symbol "BKS." Barnes & Noble.com leverages the power of the Barnes & Noble brand to offer online customers the Web 's premier destination for books, eBooks, magazines, toys & games, music, DVD and Blu-ray, video games, and related products and services” (Barnes & Noble’s, 2012). NOOK is one of the premier products that have been introduced that has increased sales to almost half a billion dollars and more than doubled over the past year. NOOK device unit sales increased approximately 45% over the previous year. The NOOK has quickly become the highest rated e-Reader in the market. The combined strength of the retail and digital businesses has given the company a unique competitive advantage that will generate more opportunities to extend their leadership as the e-content provider of choice going forward.…
Ethics has become the defining point of businesses around the world. If a person dislikes a company, usually the first thing they talk about is how unethical the business is. Take for example Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retail store. Yet there are people in this country who refuse, in fact eve protest, Wal-Mart. If you ask them why, the answer is that they think that Wal-Mart employs unethical work standards, labor standards, and pay standards. Does Wal-Mart employ these standards? The answer comes down to who you ask. The point is that in the business world of today, ethics are key goals that a company tries to maintain. Technology has helped to ensure these standards are meet, and sometimes exceeded.…
According the textbook, Contemporary Business, the author, Louis Boone, states the three primary factors that influence business ethics are: personal experience, peer pressure, and organizational culture. Corporate culture that is in opposition to ethical standards may result in conflict. For example, if you believe that it is immoral to put animal in cages, you shouldn’t work for a zoo. Good business ethics and positive employee-employer relationships are developed when personal ethical standards mirror a company's ethical standards, which strengthens loyalty amongst employers and employees. This manifests itself in the way that companies work to maximize awareness of their corporate cultures. The company talks and trains people in ethics, in the hope that the ethics will be incorporated in the employee’s…
White caller crime is slow poison for the human society. There are many negative effects associated with society. Such as economical effect and social effect. In social effect people have to lose money and in social effect, the negative effect is connected with the family. If any case your personal information are hacked by hackers so it will huge problem for us and it creates many issues on social life. Because hackers can use those information for unethically purpose. According to my understanding, white collar crime is not victimless crime. White collar crime commits manly in public sectors. Therefore, people are the main victims in the white collar crime.…
The definition of white collar crime is still truly undefined by most experts. There are many variations as well as specific traits. For example, the type of offender or the type of offense. Some however believe white collar crime is mainly related to economic and corporate crime only. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opted to approach white collar crime in terms of the offense verses the offender. The FBI’s definition is: illegal acts which are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and which are not dependent upon the application or threat of physical force or violence. Individuals and organizations commit these acts to obtain money, property, or services; to avoid the payment loss of money or services; or to…
This article shares observations on the importance of Trust in making business work well. It affirms that the corporate culture must be built on a set of eight values called OCTAPACE (Openness, Confrontation, Trust, Authenticity, Proactive, Autonomy, Collaboration and Experimenting) and that trust-based working relationships decide the success of a corporate. The authors also argue that human resource is the most important factor, which decides culture and values of an organization. The article as a whole is not a specific research but it showed essential values of organizational culture, where trust is dominant. It affirms by giving three key steps in building trust including (1) conduct a trust audit to measure trust to identify proper action; (2) build an environment of trust, where leaders set themselves as example; and (3) nurture communities of trust to encourage small teams/groups practice value of trust to ensure sustainability. However, there should be more relevant pratical examples and theories on ethics, values… in the research to illustrate author’s viewpoints.…
Furthermore, several researches and analysis are used to demonstrate that the pressure from risk-management policy is the factor most likely to cause employees to do unethical behavior, that business leaders have to play an active role in managing organizational culture and its ethical dimension, and that teaching business ethics must happen inside workplaces. Organizations must take their responsibilities and create safe places where the discussion of ethical challenges is encouraged, supported, and rewarded to avoid corporate shortcomings resulted from unethical behavior and unhealthy organizational culture.…
Anyone that has taken a class or even worked a “hint” of a white collar crimes understands that Edwin H. Sutherland is responsible for coining the term. In his book, White Collar Crime, Sutherland defines white collar crime as “[a]pproximately as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” (Benson & Simpson, 2009 ) While that definition may have held true in when he made the public definition in 1939, there are many examples in modern times that would argue against Dr. Sutherland’s characterization of the white collar criminal. In her paper to the U.S. Justice Department, Cynthia Barnett explains that even though the definition of white collar crime is , “hotly contested”, there appears to be three major categories white collar crime fits into. Those crimes are categorized by either the type of offender, the type of offense and those based upon organizational structure rather than offender or offense (Barnett, 2000). Barnett’s statement alone should tell us that the characteristics of a white collar…
Welcome to the age of white collar crime. A time when the words thieves and businessmen go hand in hand. White collar criminals don't get their hands dirty in their work. They use their heads to get what they want instead of using a little muscle. These criminals are just as dangerous as the rapists and murderers. In these times, even the most seemingly respectable people are suspected of white collar crimes. President Clinton and the first lady Hillary Clinton have been tangled up in the Whitewater and Travelgate business ventures. Although the two have not been formally charged with any wrongdoing, there is a committee currently investigating their dealings and charges are not out of the question for either of them. In Michael Isikoff's and Mark Hosenball's Newsweek article "Cracks in the Wall," they describe the Clintons' dealings with Whitewater and the possible consequences of them: "The Senate Whitewater committee is considering asking for perjury charges against Susan Thomas and Maggie Williams, Mrs. Clintons' chief of staff, in connection with her testimony about the removal of documents from Vince Foster's office" (Isikoff 29). This case goes to show that there presently a growing problem with our country, and it is called white collar crime. White collar crimes are very numerous in kind. New ones are always being invented by someone with a good scam. Embezzlement, tax evasion, and fraud are some of the more popular kinds. A person who has the power of controlling money in a business is most likely commit embezzlement. A shortened definition of embezzlement is "to steal money that is entrusted to Phillips 2 one." This is one of the fastest rising crimes in the nation. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, embezzlement rose thirty eight percent from 1984 to 1993 (U.S. Dept. of Justice 239). Forgery is another growing form of white collar crime. This is defined as the act of imitating or counterfeiting documents or signatures for the purpose of…
White collar crime has been present for many years. It may have been over looked, but it still was present even in the twentieth century. White collar crime can be defined as nonviolent, illegal activities that principally involve traditional notions of deceit, deception, concealment, manipulation, breach of trust, subterfuge or illegal circumvention. White collar crime is a broad category containing many different types of offenses. Even things such as music piracy seem to fit this definition. Small crimes such as music piracy or illegal prescription drug buying is not really enforced much because these are not really major crimes. The criminal in this crime is probably an elderly individual or child. Most prosecutions of white collar crime happen to big business owners and not local citizens engaging in piracy. There really isn 't a clear cut reason behind this phenomenon. My theory on the whole issue is that business owners are well known most of the time. They are respected men or women in society. If they engage in such a crime they would probably create the most social havoc then an elderly person would that bought illegal prescription drugs. No one is going to care about a senior citizen buying drugs but attention would be enticed by business executives smuggling money and getting rich. The ironic thing about white collar crime is that the crime itself is not all that important. What I mean by important is that its affect on society is much greater than the monetary losses that happened because of it. When you engage in white collar crime you are misleading, lying, and being somewhat of a con man to all those individuals present around you and to those in society. This violates the trust of all those in your society. Now you have an unstable society, disorganized society, and a distrustful society. Those other crimes mentioned before don 't have this much of an affect on social institutions or social organizations.…
Good ethics is essential in the workplace to have a good, working environment. Many companies now enforce ethics training, in hopes that the good ethics will rise above bad ethics. But in too many cases that does not happen.…
An individual well known the operation of a company, the chances to commit fraud is higher.…
In any organization it is imperative to have an ethical culture which defines the right means of earning money. An absent ethical culture might lead to the short term benefits but might prove to be dangerous for the long term goals. An illustration for the same had been the Enron case, where the fraud permeated to the lower level employees who believed in short term plans and unethically met the compensation targets. And the same was fostered as the people in the organization became more competitive and…
When employees sign a contract with a compamy, they are agreeing to perform certain tasks in exchange for a finacial reward. It is possible that employees are obligated to do their jobs only to get paychecks, but do they have an obligation to help the company past what they are legally responsible to do? What if their company’s interests conflict with their own? Should an employee speak out on immoral decision made by the company? Theses are just a few of the questions that an employee may have to consider while working for a company. Employees face tough moral choices including company loyalty, conflicts of interest, bribes, and whistle blowing.…
As I mature in my own professional career, I see a better picture of the world of business and the ethical standards that supports its very existence, the same standards that purged giant companies who ignored them like Enron and Worldcom. These companies, which were just one-chapter lessons during college, give me a broader perspective to business reality, now that I am already a part of it. Within my two-year stay in my current company, I’ve seen results coming from decisions that ignored ethical standards, results that were evidently unfavorable in the long run to those that were involved. Such decisions were only driven by favorable double-line figures, without consideration of critical ethical aspects of the business, one of which is employee satisfaction.…