Research Paper on:
Corporate Misconduct and the Prosecution of Lower Level Employees

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
be ethical or unethical lies within every individual. The actual choice belongs to that individual and nobody else. Therefore, the development of a set of guidelines must be done  in concert with the attitudes of the organization as well as the individual. One without the other will result in a situation in which neither the objectives of the agency  or the individual are not met which certainly assures that the needs of the organization are not met. However, it is absolutely essential that the individual be well-aware of the  guidelines and fully understand that he or she is fully obligated to follow them if they are to remain employed by the organization. If they are found to be participating  in some form of corporate malfeasance, they must be aware that they will face prosecution for their actions. And, the organization must apply those guidelines universally. The corporate officers must  be equally willing to enforce such guidelines. They cannot simply exist on a shelf in the human resource office as part of a regulatory compliance program. Insuring Corporate Ethics  Modern leaders in management and the people who play the key roles in determining management policy must be well-aware of their obligations and responsibilities as the arbitrators of ethical business  behavior. According to Banerjee, Cronan, and Jones (1998), when employees perceive top management as less than 100 percent honest and ethical, it often becomes a "monkey-see, monkey-do" system. To the  extent that an organization is dependent upon the behavior of its members, those in charge must convey expectations and provide guidance on how to behave. Their research showed that concerns  ranging from personal intention and moral belief systems to what locus of control the individual worker experiences in any particular situation (pp. 41). Banerjee and the others ultimately found that: