Matching Items (6)
Description
Financial statements are one of the most important, if not the most important, documents for investors. These statements are prepared quarterly and yearly by the company accounting department, and are then audited in detail by a large external accounting firm. Investors use these documents to determine the value of the company, and trust that the company was truthful in its statements, and the auditing firm correctly audited the company's financial statements for any mistakes in their books and balances. Mistakes on a company's financial statements can be costly. However, financial fraud on the statements can be outright disastrous. Penalties for accounting fraud can include individual lifetime prison sentences, as well as company fines for billions of dollars. As students in the accounting major, it is our responsibility to ensure that financial statements are accurate and truthful to protect ourselves, other stakeholders, and the companies we work for. This ethics game takes the stories of Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers and uses them to help students identify financial fraud and how it can be prevented, as well as the consequences behind unethical decisions in financial reporting. The Enron scandal involved CEO Kenneth Lay and his predecessor Jeffery Skilling hiding losses in their financial statements with the help of their auditing firm, Arthur Andersen. Enron collapsed in 2002, and Lay was sentenced to 45 years in prison with his conspirator Skilling sentenced to 24 years in prison. In the WorldCom scandal, CEO Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers booked line costs as capital expenses (overstating WorldCom's assets), and created fraudulent accounts to inflate revenue and WorldCom's profit. Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison and lost his title as WorldCom's Chief Executive Officer. Lehman Brothers took advantage of a loophole in accounting procedure Repo 105, that let the firm hide $50 billion in profits. No one at Lehman Brothers was sentenced to jail since the transaction was technically considered legal, but Lehman was the largest investment bank to fail and the only large financial institution that was not bailed out by the U.S. government.
ContributorsPanikkar, Manoj Madhuraj (Author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Ahmad, Altaf (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit substance in the United States with over two million pounds seized annually and with a usage rate estimated at 19.8 million people in 2013 (SAMSHA, 2014). Currently there is a nationwide movement for the legalization of recreational marijuana via referendum at the state level. Three states and the District of Columbia have already adopted amendments legalizing marijuana and over a dozen more currently have pending ballots. This report explores what would be the impact of legalizing marijuana in Arizona through the examination of data from Colorado and other governmental sources. Using a benefit/cost analysis the data is used to determine what the effect the legalization of marijuana would have in Arizona. I next examined the moral arguments for legalization. Finally I propose a recommendation for how the issue of the legalization of recreational marijuana should be approached in Arizona.
ContributorsDiPietro, Samuel Miles (Author) / Kalika, Dale (Thesis director) / Lynk, Myles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
At a time when the national and world community is viewing collegiate business programs as complicit in many recent business scandals rooted in ethical violations and breaches of trust, improving ethics education is a high priority. Review of current research on techniques for effectively teaching ethics highlights the importance of incorporating conversational learning, decision models, and relevant, personalized case discussions into undergraduate ethics lessons. Focusing exclusively on ethics education in the first-year business seminar WPC 101, we evaluated the current ethics/academic integrity module and found it to be lacking many research-supported techniques. To develop an updated curriculum, we first used the EthicsGame Ethical Lens Inventory in a survey of 114 W. P. Carey students to explore whether a connection between students' majors and primary ethical lenses would demonstrate the effectiveness of designing different, tailored ethics curricula for students in each major. Regression analysis of the survey responses indicated that this research was inconclusive for every major except for Accountancy, which already has a specific (upper-division) ethics course. This initial research stage led to the creation of a universally applicable ethics curriculum based on the Baird Decision Model. Incorporating techniques from the literature review, the new WPC 101 Academic Honesty & Ethics curriculum includes a presentation on the Baird Decision Model, a small-group discussion of a relevant ethical dilemma, and a class role play. The curriculum additionally includes detailed Facilitator Guidelines for educators. The curriculum was piloted in WPC 101 classes during Spring 2016, and we present student and facilitator feedback as well as suggestions for further research and improvement. Use of this research-backed curriculum and further study into its impact on student decision making will allow W. P. Carey to continue advancing in pursuit of training students to be effective ethical leaders.
ContributorsMcClelland, Allison (Co-author) / Mayper, Rebecca (Co-author) / Samuelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Parker, John (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Management (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This thesis seeks to investigate the use of Artificial Intelligence when reviewing STEM job applications and the human biases that are present in AI system training datasets. Further, it proposes to gender neutralize training dataset terms to evaluate job applications based on merit and qualifications, promoting the inclusivity of women in STEM jobs and seeking to eliminate job application system bias from a Utilitarian perspective.
ContributorsMannenbach, Kelly (Author) / Sopha, Matthew (Thesis director) / Marchant, Gary (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
I conducted research on the three tenants of the Fraud Triangle and the theories that were built from it, allowing me to identify the common reasons why people violate ethical standards and commit fraud. Having evaluated different theories for understanding fraudulent motivations and rationalizations, witnessing current practices in the field of forensic accounting, and analyzing input from peers, I have been able to identify the behind-the-scenes rationales of why people commit financial fraud.
My research proves the importance of teaching individuals behavioral ethics to prevent themselves from entering situations that could lead them to commit fraud. This is an ongoing education that needs to be taught as technology changes and fraud techniques improve. Employees need to be constantly reminded of these key issues. Unfortunately, if individuals never learn to prevent themselves from acting on unknown biases, they could instead be learning the serious legal and financial consequences of their ignorance in behavioral ethics.
ContributorsFavata, Ashley (Author) / Dawson, Gregory (Thesis director) / Geiger, Karen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
This project focuses on the effects of partisanship and electoral contestation on the likelihood of state legislators to adopt an independent ethics commission. Existing literature suggests that ethics reform is a function of public perception and the need to assuage public outrage in the face of scandal. Additionally, many legislators view ethics laws as suggestions of their own ineptitude and thus resist reform. However, this existing view fails to consider the unique nature of the enabling legislation of ethics commissions and often conflates external, public drivers of reform with internal drivers personal to the individual legislators. Using logistic regression and time series analysis, this project finds that increased durations of single-party control in state legislatures decreases the chances of that legislature having an independent commission, suggesting that legislators use the partisan ethics committees as political weapons when they are in power. When the dominant party does not face the risk of becoming the minority, there is little in place to motivate ethics reform, thus the lack of commissions. This research identifies the need to develop more focused measures of inter-legislator partisanship and suggests that the effects of different types of ethics laws, specifically those pertaining to ethics commissions, should more often be studied in isolation, rather than as one single category.
ContributorsRobertson, Gordon (Author) / Hoekstra, Valerie (Thesis director) / Suk, Mina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor)
Created2022-05