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U.S. Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) to help prevent lapses in internal control

Identify a specific tool or technique from those identified in Chapter 19, and discuss how the tool is used in your current or former place of employment. (See some of chapter below)

Business Ethics

All employees within an organization are expected to act ethically in their business activities. Given the importance of ethical behavior to corporations and their owners (stockholders), an increasing number of organizations provide codes of business ethics for their employees.

Creating Proper Incentives

Companies like Amazon.com, IBM, and Nike use complex systems to monitor, control, and evaluate the actions of managers. Unfortunately, these systems and controls sometimes unwittingly create incentives for managers to take unethical actions.

Because budgets are also used as an evaluation tool, some managers try to “game” the budgeting process by underestimating their division’s predicted performance so that it will be easier to meet their performance targets.

But, if budgets are set at unattainable levels, managers sometimes take unethical actions to meet the targets in order to receive higher compensation or, in some cases, to keep their jobs.

In a recent example, the largest bank in the United States, Wells Fargo, admitted that it had fired 5,300 employees for opening more than 2 million accounts without customer approval or knowledge. According to the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses.”

Code of Ethical Standards

In response to corporate scandals, the U.S. Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) to help prevent lapses in internal control.

CEOs and CFOs are now required to certify that financial statements give a fair presentation of the company’s operating results and its financial condition.

Top managers must certify that the company maintains an adequate system of internal controls to ensure accurate financial reports.

Companies now pay more attention to the composition of the board of directors. In particular, the audit committee of the board of directors must be comprised entirely of independent members (that is, non-employees) and must contain at least one financial expert.

The law substantially increases the penalties for misconduct.

To provide guidance for managerial accountants, the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) has developed a code of ethical standards, entitled IMA Statement of Ethical Professional Practice. Management accountants should not commit acts in violation of these standards. Nor should they condone such acts by others within their organizations. Throughout the text, we address various ethical issues managers face.

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The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is federal law enacted in 1976 and it gives the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) the powers to control solid wastes considered hazardous.

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on occupational safety and health. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is federal law enacted in 1976 and it gives the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) the powers to control solid wastes considered hazardous. The controlling authority over hazardous waste ranges from generation, treatment, transportation, storage to disposal. RCRA does not only involve management of hazardous waste but also nonhazardous solid waste (http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/resource_conservation_and_recovery_act_rcra). Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) is a federal law enacted in 1980 to assist in controlling releases of specific hazardous wastes. CERCLA is also known as the Superfund. This law empowers the EPA to respond to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may pose a danger on the environment, welfare and public health. CERCLA also empowers the EPA to compel parties responsible for contaminating the environment to remove the hazardous substance, or reimburse CERCLA for response and or EPA’s remediation expenditure (http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/lcla.html). The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) is a Federal law whose objective is control pesticide distribution, sale and usage. The law requires that all pesticides used in the United States to be registered (Licensed) by EPA (http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/lfra.html).

S. 1166 Protecting America’s Workers Act-Amends the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA-1970) to expand its coverage to federal, state, and local government employees (“S. 1166—112th ”, 2011). The Act gives the Secretary of Labour under specified conditions to cede OSHA-1970 power to another federal agency in accordance with certain occupational standards for such agency’s employees.