When the economy collapsed in , millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in investments vanished — along with confidence in once-trusted institutions and business people. Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in U. If memories of Enron and Arthur Andersen from earlier this decade had faded, a whole new cast of malefactors has been revealed. It also called for new regulations for credit ratings agencies and ways to bring transparency to derivative investment vehicles that contributed to the economic collapse.

Business ethics



Three Theories of Corporate Social Responsibility
Triple bottom line TBL , in economics, believes that companies should commit to focusing as much on social and environmental concerns as they do on profits. TBL theory posits that instead of one bottom line, there should be three: profit, people, and the planet. A TBL seeks to gauge a corporation's level of commitment to corporate social responsibility and its impact on the environment over time. In , John Elkington—the famed British management consultant and sustainability guru—coined the phrase "triple bottom line" as his way of measuring performance in corporate America. The idea was that a company can be managed in a way that not only makes money but which also improves people's lives and the planet. In finance, when we speak of a company's bottom line , we usually mean its profits.


The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work?
In Alameda County, a private hospital turned away a woman in labor because the hospital's computer showed that she didn't have insurance. Hours later, her baby was born dead in a county hospital. In San Bernardino, a hospital surgeon sent a patient who had been stabbed in the heart to a county medical center after examining him and declaring his condition stable.
Demand for acoustic instruments was down—sales trumped by those of electric guitars for the first time ever. A strike had lowered morale. Several recent acquisitions had not worked out well, and the company was saddled with excessive debt.