Question

Read the case study below and answer the ensuing question.

Well Fargo -Fake Accounts

Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational ,publicly traded financial services company that is headquartered in San Francisco, California with main offices throughout the country. By this point in time many citizens have become familiar with the scandal that has occurred at Wells Fargo Bank; however, the astonishing part of this scandal is that the company has acted fraudulently and unethically. Recent reports as of late 2017 demonstrated that Wells Fargo now says that it has found a total of up to 3.5 million potential fake bank accounts and credit card accounts which is 1.4 million more than originally estimated. Additionally, approximately 190,000 accounts received unnecessary fees which is 60,000 more than originally estimated. The unethical behavior does not end here. It has been found that 528,000 customers were enrolled in unauthorized online bill pay, and up to 570,000 borrowers were forced into unnecessary auto insurance; about 20,000 of these customers potentially had their cars repossessed due to these insurance costs. The primary motive behind the millions of fake accounts can be traced all the way up to the CEO and higher-level management. John Stumpf, former CEO of Wells during the time, and senior executives put tremendous sales pressure on the employees of Wells Fargo setting a target for the creation of eight accounts per customer. This tremendous sales pressure was forced upon lower level employees at Wells Fargo resulting in the creation of millions of fake accounts which was done out of a fear that the average employee would lose his or her job if the demands of management were not met.

There have been key governmental actions against Wells Fargo since the fake account scandal has taken place. First, the company has been fined $185 million. Secondly, there has been a growth cap placed on Wells. The bank has dealt with the currently faces investigations as well as class action lawsuits. These are steps in the right direction to mitigate the effects of Wells Fargo's actions; however, they are not enough. Individuals who hold the most responsibility including John Stumpf and senior management who oversaw the fraud must be appropriately indicted. While the employees as Wells who carried out the actions hold some level of responsibility, the ultimate responsibility must be targeted at Stumpf and high-level management, those individuals who essentially forced the employees and coached them to continually open up fake accounts in the names of Wells Fargo customers. When the statistics pertaining to profit is analyzed, the unethicality associated with this case becomes even more grueling. John Stumpf and top-level management profited millions as a result of the surged stock price during the scandal of fake accounts.

Question:

Critically discuss the actions of Wells Fargo by applying the major normative ethical decision-making theories in business ethics.

Answer 1

Wells Fargo actions according to major normative theories of ethics violated the principles of ethical theories like Utilitarianism, Kantian categorical imperative and Virtue ethics. Utilitarianism theory deals with doing actions that are in the benefit of large number of people. In this case, vast number of customers were affected due to the fake accounts and charges applied on them. Apart from the frauds with customers, the fines imposed of the company also negatively impacted its employees and team members. Thus the company's action were not as per Utilitarianism theory of ethics ensuring good for the maximum number of persons.

Kantian ethics supports following universal laws based on truths to be followed for preventing bias and injustice. The company employees did fraudulent practices to promote their interests and management benefits and got implicated in frauds and malpractices case by regulatory agencies.

Virtue ethics promotes moral values that should be followed by every individual in the society in dealing with each other. The Wells Fargo practices violated the virtue ethics and its employees ignored basic virtues of honesty and integrity in business and ultimately faced charges against them affecting the future of the company and its business.

The company needed to promote ethical behaviour with management defining the ethical standards to be followed and not just focusing on company profits at the cost of its customers like collecting charges that were not justified and following irregular practices. It needs to uphold moral values in the organisation , educate and train its employees explaining them the implications for doing unethical practices and the impact on the future.