Cheating in a Bottom Line Economy

SUMMARY & CRITIQUE OF Cheating in a Bottom Line Economy (by David Callahan)In Cheating in a Bottom Line Economy, author David Callahan explains the fundamental reasons for the decay of simple business ethics in todays economy in fiat to stand underside line standards. Callahan draws conclusions from everyday businesses such(prenominal) as auto mechanic services, law offices, and even professional medical examination firms to prove that people will near always choose financial stability over integrity.The economic life in America has transformed itself into a vast land of professionals focused on achieving lean and mean businesses in efforts to achieve the American Dream, hardly in essence lose sense of their morals. What happens when an employee is living a standard life with a job just bargonly getting them by? Executives at corporate headquarters decide to send down a new set of marching music orders that drill employees with twice as much work for a sharply decreased base pay. Those marching orders have coined the term bottom line standards.American businesses have become highly competitive today in a market that is constantly changing to keep up with a new generation of ideas. These fluctuations in the economy have caused businesses to take different methods of actions to be competitive in the market. In the 1970s Sears reigned as one of Americas swell known retailers and shaped popular culture. As the market of demand became more competitive, Sears earnings began falling off the market. In order to get on the acquit market, Sears had to cut 48,000 jobs and institutionalized a new compensation system (Callahan 31).As Sears set their new bottom-line standards to increase efficiency, it caused uproar from the employees. The demands of the company ultimately undermined the integrity of their workers. The atmospheric pressure to make unpleasant ethical choices at work had employees torn between moral integrity, losing their job, and trying to figure out how to work all this out (Callahan 31). Employees of companies with bottom line standards were faced with a new decision at margin which made doing the right thing harder suffer a pay cut and take a chance losing their job or cheat the customer.Not to our surprise, the employee would almost always choose their economic stability over their integrity. It is still not easy to say that the employees conscious didnt warn them of the risks, the first time. It begins with just a simple upgrade tune up and then trickles to $1,000 in new auto parts. If we facial gesture back at the Sears auto mechanic example, a mechanic could easily convince the customer that their car needed a self-colored new system because of the customers lack of knowledge of the subject. The customer automatically assumes there is a guaranteed trust commitment to their service, but in mature gets fooled.The evidence unearthed by investigators give nearly identical reports of cheater at one Sears auto repair shop after another. The art of deception play a key role in fooling customers. The ordinary people at the New York City law firms were bound by an oath to endure a rigorous code of ethics (Callahan 33). Though these lawyers dealt with legal affairs of Americas largest companies, they were faced with not meeting year end bang requirements. In the most desperate cases of being downsized, lawyers turned to padding their hours by simply making up the numbers.They rounded up their hours and added in miscellaneous hours which was expound as the new math (Callahan 39). Let me tell you how you will trigger acting unethicallyOne day, not too long after you start practicing law, you will sit down at the end of a long, tiring day, and you just wont have much to show for your efforts in term of billable hoursso what youll do is pad your time sheet just a bitHowever you will promise yourself that you will repay the client at the first opportunity by doing thirty minutes for the client for f ree. In this way, you will be borrowin, not stealing, (Schlitz qtd. in Callahan 39). Commitments to meeting bottom line standards and avaritia have become directions of undermining integrity of even the most trusted profession medical doctors. Medical professionals begin engaging in multilevel marketing companies such as the Wellness International Network (WIN), which dictate distributors to sell their companys product at any extent. By earning money off of new distributors, this multilevel marketing became a pyramid scheme for destruction. Report peg the sale of health supplements by doctors at nearly $200 million in 2001, a tenf superannuated increase from 1997. An estimated 20,000 doctors are now selling supplements from their offices, more than double the number of five years ago (Callahan 49). These sorts of insider trading inwardly their offices go against the American Medical Association guidelines that doctors must ensure that the claims supporting any products they sell t o patients are scientifically valid and backed up by compeer reviewed literature and other unbiased scientific sources (Callahan 49).They clearly prohibit the exchange of medical equipment, but the profit is too grand for the doctors to pass up. Those in the medical profession argue that they resort to such options to pay for their debt payments and management. Comments such as I was used to following doctors adviceDoctors have the training, so youve got to respect their expertise (Cumminskey qtd. in Callahan 48) prove that doctors hold a high level of respect for their profession, but it diminishes as scandals of deception are released to the public.In Steven Messners and Richard Rosenfelds article A Society Organized for Crime, they explain that peoples behavior towards meeting bottom line standards is to fulfill the American Dream. They state that the American Dream is an political theory that people are socialized to accept the desirability of pursing the goal of material succ ess, and they are encouraged to believe that the changes of the Dream are sufficiently high to discharge a continued commitment to this cultural goal (Messner 6). Generally, success in todays society is defined by monetary and material gains. therefrom people are willing to go at any measure to achieve that success.Both articles explain how crime and delinquency arise from economic dis frame ines that are settled with unethical behavior. The issue at hand is the fact that these issues cannot be solved in conventional ways, but only by working nigh the system to deceive their customers. Callahans article reinforces these popular notions that crime is not always intentional, but a means of getting through small obstacles in life in an unethical matter. These illegal activities begin as small meaningless preconceived activities and then sprout to everyday routines that are accepted within their business community.Callahan also makes us reconsider the power of higher authority figure s that knowingly condone and usually promote this unethical behavior. This takes us back to the old saying, would you jump off a cliff if everyone did? The answer is yes. In all three of the cases, personal issues about cheating were put aside because everyone was doing it. I found these readings really interesting and relevant to the topic of crime and delinquency. Callahan does an excellent job of explaining the effects of bottom lines standards on people and the economy.I completely agree with his survey that choosing economical stability over integrity will get a person closer to the American Dream then losing their job. It poses a moral issue, but in this century you cant live on just integrity. The sad truth is people gain integrity from their monetary and material wealth. I believe Callahan could really expand on this topic by looking further into the psychological standpoint of meeting bottom line standards in order to get a better understanding of what goes through a pers ons mind when deciding to go against their morals.KEY POINTS, ISSUES, AND QUESTIONSDoing the right thing gets harder as the pressure between financial stability and integrity is put on the line.The game of hustling becomes everyday knowledge that moral ethics are completely put aside.The American Dream causes people to act irrationally, but if you really think about it their unethical act stimulate the economy.Question What are the implications of Callahans work for discovering cheating in a bottom line economy?Question What are the psychological aspects of going against morals to deceive people ?