The past three years have witnessed stunning financial collapses in many companies that were ranked among the most admired companies in America. Sunbeam, Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and HealthSouth were lauded, imitated, and studied for their stunning performances. Now they are studied for their failures. What went wrong? How could so much go so wrong? And, the inevitable question, where were the auditors and the accountants as these financial statements of well-being were released?

Tyco International CEO Dennis Kozlowski, former CFO Mark Swartz, and former general counsel Mark Belnick were all indicted on charges that Kozlowski and Swartz, among others, stole $170 million from the company and pocketing $430 million from the fraudulent sale of Tyco stock. Belnick was charged with hiding $14 million in loans to himself. Tyco's management fired back as well. It filed a lawsuit against Kozlowski looking to recoup $244 million in pay and benefits. Tyco, over the period betwe

At Tyco's request, all major Raychem sites will pay all pending payables, whether they are due or not ... I understand from Ray [Raychem's CFO] that we have agreed to do this, even though we will be spending the money for no tangible benefit either to Raychem or Tyco. A report completed by David Boies, at the direction of Tyco's board, included an interview with an employee of another Tyco acquisition in which the employee indicates that a Tyco executive asked: "How high can we get these things? How can we justify getting this higher?" (Ackroyd & Thompson, 1999). The Boies report indicates that Tyco executives used both incentives and pressure on executives in order to get them to push the envelope on accounting rules in the acquisition process.

5. No layoffs and the hiring and promotion of those with disabilities;

The Israeli bank-shares fiasco, the Enron affair, and, in its wake now, the WorldCom and Tyco scandals clearly demonstrate that unethical managers are a liability not only to their own organizations, but to the general public. The problem is that the formulation and publication of codes of ethics alone do not guarantee that managers and employees will behave ethically. Moreover, it is evident that managerial ethical behavior has a great deal of influence on the ethical climate and culture of the organization. Walking the talk is the name of the game, managers must not only be familiar with the ethical culture and accept it, but must serve as examples to the rest of the corporation. Any disparity between the declared ideology of the organization and managers' behavior has a deleterious effect. To establish a reputation of ethical leadership, managers must adhere to a high moral ground and ensure that their actions are perceived to be ethical.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2337
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)