MANAGEMENT 3301

REALITY BASED
EDUCATIONAL REPORTTOM FOX
By: Christine Fletcher

On September, 21 2015, speaker Tom Fox spoke about a lot of important

things in his presentation. One of the key things that stood out to me was the
portion of the presentation that talked about the tone at the top. Dr. Tom Fox
referred to the tone at the top as the environment set by the managers and
executives in a company. In the PowerPoint Dr. Fox discussed Lance Armstrong and
his ability to scheme lie, steal and cheat his way to 7 Tour de France titles. In the
presentation Dr. Fox talked about how he would discredit anyone who tried to tell
the truth about him. We also talked about this in class when we discussed varies
ethical policies and procedures, as well as things such as companys missions
statements and heroes. Most companies have ethic policies and offer training, but
what they fail to do is properly enforce these policies when it comes to senior
management. When an employee sees or hears about high-level managers making
unethical decisions and not following the rules that are supposed to be enforced to
all employees at every level of the company, they may feel it is right to make
unethical decisions as well. In a recent study over 49% of employees admitted to
making unethical decisions because they were following the boss's directives. I feel
that the tone at the top is very important in a company or organization. I have
worked at a job where my manager was very unprofessional and instead of me
being as productive and professional as I would usually be, I mirrored her actions.
As an new employee I look-up to my boss and I watched what she did in order to
establish a sense of what was right and wrong within the company. The more I
mimicked her actions the more I would get penalized for them and I begin to see the
error in what I was doing. Once I realized the effect this manager was having on me,
I decided to relocate to another team.

Another important topic that Fox covered in his lecture was whistle-blowers
and programs companies try to implement in order to protect whistleblowers. He
spoke about how Lance Armstrong would publically humiliate and even fire
members of his staff for telling the truth about him. In class we also discussed
whistleblowers and ethical responsibility, as well. Some of the things organizations
could do to promote better ethical decisions would be to establish a company code
of ethics and even an ethics committee. We also discussed an ethics hotline so that
employees could call and report unethical behavior without fear of retaliation. In
the case of Lance Armstrong, none of the policies were in place and the employees
were fired, among other things, for coming forward. I researched information about
law set in place to protect employees and prevent situations like that one from
happening again. What I discovered was that in 1989 the Whistleblower Protection
Act was passed. This United States federal law protects whistleblowers who work for
the government and report agency misconduct. From the information that I read
about this particular law was that it only seems to apply to federal employees. What
laws are in place to protect those who are not federal workers? Most states have
their own laws in place to protect whistleblowers within company and government
jobs. These laws make it illegal for an employer to retaliate or discriminate against
an employee in any way for whistleblowing.
One thing I have learned is that even with the ethics codes and committees;
laws and regulations some things still fall through the cracks. It is hard to make
sure that everyone in an organization is doing their parts to ensure that all of the
deadlines and quotas are being meet in a legal and ethical way without some type
of oversight. In large companies someone has to be responsible for monitoring and
auditing. This departments sole purpose is to make sure everyone is achieving

their goals in a legal and ethical way. They should also be able to investigate and
prosecute anyone who does not follow the rules set in place. Oversight should be
able to scrutinize (investigate is used twice too close together) everyone within a
company from the lower-level employees to the CEO and CFO. If anyone is found
guilty of violating these acts, then they should suffer the same penalties, for the
same crime; no matter their position within a company.
The presentation of Dr. Fox was very enlightening and it brought a better
perspective to what to look for when determining which company I want to work for
once I graduate. I really enjoyed Dr. Tom Foxs lecture and I look forward to hearing
him speak again.