Corporate Failure at Board Level: an Ethical and Corporate Governance Perspective

You are required to choose an organisation that has been involved in corporate failure at board level. You are required to critically discuss from an ethical and corporate governance perspective the key failings in the organisation that lead to such an event occurring. Your essay must include obvious links to academic literature and ethical and corporate governance theories.

The essay should be well-presented, should contain a well-informed critical analysis, and should show a good standard of academic referencing.

All students must submit an electronic copy in word format (NOT PDF) via GCU LEARN and Turnitin UK along with your reference list. Please note toward the hand in date turnitin will be really busy so do not leave your test turnitin until the last moment, you can only submit to test turnitin once every 24 hours.  Click the ‘Assignments’ tab on the control panel on the GCU Learn screen for the Module to find the turnitin submission section.

NOTE: Students must only use the turnitin test facility on this module for the EGRL assignment, if students are found to be submitting their case study to other modules test turnitin then they will automatically fail the assignment.

The approach to the essay

Students should demonstrate the breadth of their reading in their essays with reference to original peer-reviewed academic articles, additional to those journal articles covered in the class (marks will be deducted where this is not demonstrated). There will also be a need to include media and company reports. Marks will be awarded for the clarity of argument and quality of presentation as well as technical content.

Format of the course work

The essay should be submitted online only.  Text should be double spaced except for indented quotations which should be single spaced. 

From textbooks, articles in journals, relevant websites, news reports on the scandal, organisational website (what they claim they did about the scandal)

• What are ethics?

• What is viewed as ethical business practice?

• Why are ethical business practices important?

• How is ethical business implemented?

• Why does unethical business practice happen – what is unethical behaviour –what ethical theories and concepts provides an explanation of unethical behaviour?

• How does an ethical theory/concept help explain the unethical behaviour and fraudulent acts committed in your organisation?

• How should organisations take action against unethical behaviour – change of Board… legislation enforced…criminal proceedings?

• How effectively did your organisation respond to the fraud – did they follow the steps identified in the literature?

• From textbooks, articles in journals, relevant websites, news reports on the scandal, organisational website (what they claim they did about the scandal)

• What is CG – why needed…key goals?

• Why does CG fail – key reasons/problems?

• How can organisational behaviours, culture and structures lead to ethical and CG failures?

• IN your organisation, which of these failures was present?

• Did these problems of poor CG exist in your organisation?

• How should poor/ineffective CG… failure in CG be addressed – What is viewed as good practice to transform poor cg into effective cg – what needs to happen?
  
  
• What did your organisation do to address their failure in CG – good practice?