3. Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
Cases of Interest
Wells Fargo
The Wells Fargo crisis over mismanaging customer relationships, fraudulently implementing illegal and unethical sales practices with trusted clients, has cost the company in fines, lost business, and the resignation of the CEO. The following online sources offer a narrative and factual source of what happened, when, to whom, and why. Use these sources to answer and provide evidence to the following questions to present to the class:
- What were the sources and causes the problems in the first place? Explain.
- Who were some of the primary decision makers that led to the illegal sales activities?
- What were these individuals’ motives and motivations?
- How were the illegal and fraudulent activities discovered?
- Who was to blame?
- What unethical activities occurred before the illegal actions took place?
- What would you have done, if anything, had you been one of the sales professionals pressured to engage in unethical, illegal practices there?
- How would a stakeholder approach, if taken by the company’s top leaders and board of directors, have possibly prevented the crisis?
Sources:
- Comrie, Harley, “Wells Fargo Fake Accounts Scandal”, Seven Pillars Institute, March 15, 2017, http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/wells-fargo-fake-accounts-scandal ;
- “Wells Fargo Banking Scandal a Financial crisis We Can Finally Understand”, The Guardian, accessed January 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/business/us-money-blog/2016/oct/07/wells-fargo-banking-scandal-financial-crisis;
- Glazer, Emily, “Wells Fargo’s Textbook Case of Botched Crisis Management”, The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/wells-fargos-textbook-case-of-how-not-to-handle-a-crisis-1476380576
