Westchester Distributing – College Essay

and avoid the '"Wizard of Oz" approach. When employees feel heard and empowered, they will alert management more quickly to problem.

Another issue that goes hand in hand with communication is Westchester poor tone at the top. Vince had employees sign the "Standards of Conduct" but did not demonstrate a focus on ethics through his actions, as he communicated mainly through memos. Vince expected to hear what he wanted to hear and not what may have been really going on.

From the situation in the case were Roberts was crying and Vince wanting o slap Roberts, it was evident that Westchester employees also feared telling Vince bad news. An environment of fear and poor tone at the top also Inhibits communication when an ethical problem arises. A messenger of bad news may not come forth if fear of retribution is high.

Vince focused on the output too much and not enough on the processes or inputs. This signaled to his employees to focus on the outputs. Employees started to Ignore the process as Vince was doing and take whatever acting that was needed to reach output goals.

This created fertile environment for fraud. The focus on output gave way to the need to break the rules, and poor tone at the top gave way to employees rationalizing their actions to achieve their goal.

The last element of fraud opportunity was also present as Carter, George, and Roberts were a close trio and no Internal controls were In place to deter them. The fraud that occurred was a breakdown of core operations and exposes the firm to the possibility of shutting down for 45 days. This

operations risk can result in a loss lose in terms of reputation as it has the title of Miller Grand Master seven times.

One teeth that Vince should consider to better signal his focus on ethics and not Just sale is implementing a balanced score card. Learning and growth category with a focus in ethics could be one category that helps signal Vine's commitment to ethical practices. Customer satisfaction and improvements in profitability would also help communicate the whole strategy to employees so sales is not one sides.

Salesmen have the direct relationships with customers and have more insight than anyone else in terms of customer needs and expectations.