It is the People Who Contribute to Operational Excellence
Establishing leadership whether in a product market or a services market is not easy, especially in the fast changing world where the life cycle of products and services tends to be very short. A look at the Companies that have grown in stature and maintained their growth story tells you of the hard work that […]
Routes to Strategic Growth: Organic or Inorganic Growth
Organic Growth Organic growth in management parlance refers to the growth of a company that occurs naturally. In other words, if a company grows through increased revenues and increased profitability on its own without resorting to mergers and acquisitions, then it is known to grow organically. For instance, companies like Infosys are known to shun […]
Making Corporations Accountable for their Actions by Voluntary and Involuntary Means
Why Corporations Must be Made Accountable for Their Actions Throughout the history of the modern corporations, there have been cases where corporations have literally and figuratively gotten off with murder and wanton destruction and exploitation of the natural environment. Indeed, the 20th century is littered with examples of how rapacious corporations have both extracted resources […]
Product Value Proposition and Business Process Re-engineering
Success of Business Managers and Marketing Managers depends largely upon short term goal of achieving targeted sales as well as focusing continually on long term strategies to grow and retain the leadership in the market. Becoming a brand leader and continuing to retain the leadership calls for the Organization to continually be in touch with […]
Knowledge Creation and Management
Introduction The concept of knowledge as the founding block for attaining competitive advantage has become quite prevalent in Management studies. All knowledge should begin form a piece of information. For the conversion of information into knowledge there is a critical aspect to be noted. This is related to the timing of the retrieval of information. […]
The often discussed and much criticized role of the government in regulating the corporate has gained all the more importance in these changing economic times. It’s time that the governments took more active role in regularizing the corporate through necessary means as we have learnt the painful way that the corporate crimes or the white collar crimes as they are called not at all victimless. So, if an old employee losses all his pension and savings on account of a corporate fraud committed by his organizations, the ramifications are long term. The mere wrist slapping exercise and sometimes even bail out that the government finances for erring corporate, surely does not act as a deterrent for others.
The very complex nature of the government and corporate can be clearly studied in the ongoing crisis in the European Union where the question of whether to use tax payers money to bail out Greece’s economy has become a political decisions rather than a business one. So what is the alternate path? Allowing self regulation by organization means making fox the shepherd, while on the other hand, going by the rule book approach of the US government has also been under much criticism, more so after the current financial crisis begun.
The other aspect of the scenario is the fact that fines are considered to be a part of doing business by the corporate, and the civic penalties that are occasionally levied against them is hardly enough to set example. The criminal sanctions against corporate are not a common phenomenon and the experts believe that can be more potent in deterring corporate misconduct. However, the other side of the coin is the fact that most of the regulating authorities like SEC etc have no authorities to impose criminal sanctions against corporate. Also, the penalties and fines bring no respite to the employees, shareholders and communities. [Recall the Bhopal Gas Tragedy]. Reasonably evaluated criminal and civic sanctions in a mix as appropriate can help address the issue.
The choice of going after the corporation or people, who have been involved in the misconduct, is another important consideration. A rather fair and objective view of this issue is that if the organization has a proper system of safeguards and checks in systems and processes and if the misconduct profits just one person, in this case even the corporate becomes a victim. For such situations a single person can be accused of embezzlement and liable for prosecution however if the fraud is at a larger level involving more people, the situation becomes complex, whether to hold liable the board members and senior leaders for failing to ensure the prevention.
The recent legislative development has come up with a guideline for the corporate:
The government should also ensure that there are not too many agencies to act as enforcement authorities as this may lead to conflict of interests.
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