Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Today's schedule is C-D-Lunch-B-A

C - Criminology 12 - Today we continue our look at White Collar crime. We will start the class with a discussion about business and corporate culture. What is it that makes a successful business person and what kind of ethical behaviour is valued by corporate culture? From the Business Ethics Forum blog site:

An outstanding in-depth article on the Value of Corporate Values can be found in an article by Reggie Van Lee, Lisa Fabish, and Nancy McGaw in this month's S+B.

Based on a survey at 365 companies in 30 countries, the authors claim "increasingly, companies around the world have adopted formal statements of corporate values, and senior executives now routinely identify ethical behavior, honesty, integrity, and social concerns as top issues on their companies’ agendas".

The highlights of the survey and article are:

1. A large number of companies are making their values explicit. That’s a change — quite a significant change — from corporate practices 10 years ago. The ramifications of this shift are just beginning to be understood.
2. Ethical behavior is a core component of company activities.
3. Most companies believe values influence two important strategic areas — relationships and reputation — but do not see the direct link to growth.
4. Most companies are not measuring their “ROV.”
5. Top performers consciously connect values and operations.
6. Values practices vary significantly by (continental) region.
7. The CEO’s tone really matters.

The article provides quantitative data about these 7 findings and concludes with "A commitment to corporate values may be in vogue, but the public will remain suspicious until corporations both understand and can demonstrate that they are committed to using values to create value".

What we are looking at is what makes people abuse the public trust in corporations. We will look at stings, swindles, and chiselling today. We'll discuss ImClone (Martha Stewart), Bre-X, and the Albert Walker case. We'll watch an Exhibit A episode on the Walker embezzlement & murder case which will lead us into tomorrows topic of corporate crime.

B- Social Studies 10 - Today we will continue our look at the factors that led to Confederation in Canada. We'll take a look at changing attitudes in Britain (Little Englanders) and political deadlock in the 1860's (between 1849 - 1864 there were twelve governments formed). You'll take a few notes on these topics and then you need to work on the coalition government worksheet (read through pages 40-42 for help) as well as questions 4 & 5 from page 57 and question 9 from page 58 in the Challenge of the West textbook.

A - Social Studies 11 - You have your unit final test on World War One today. If you studied and came prepared, I'm sure that you will do well. We'll mark the first three sections together and then with the remaining time left in class we'll discuss the stress placed on the social fabric of the country with returning soldiers in 1919.