Ethics and Derivatives Ethical and Financial Risks of Derivatives

This paper examines the ethical and financial risks of derivatives. The paper discusses moral philosophies, how white collar crime differs from blue collar crime, and reviews the role of corporate culture and banking industry leaders in the banking industry meltdown that contributed to the worst recession in U.S. history.

The moral philosophy most applicable to understanding the banking industry meltdown is teleology. Teleological ethics holds that an action is right or wrong in terms of the consequences that result from it. From the perspective of the banking industry, this consequentialist approach defines their ethics in terms of whether an act produces a desired result. Given that their desired results were the advancement of self-interest and the accumulation of wealth, any action that produced these results would be considered ethical.

The single-minded pursuit of profit to the disregard of all other considerations, including risk to stakeholder value, is deeply ingrained in the corporate cultures of the financial industry. As the case study indicates, derivatives have had a long history of troubled transactions. In spite of this record, managers and traders were never compensated in a way that penalized them for fraudulent or deceptive practices; instead they were rewarded based on short-term results. The fact that those results were obtained as a consequence of manipulation and excessive risk-taking did not constitute a moral problem for many within the banking industry. Their egoist philosophy allowed them to take advantage of market opportunities without considering any consequences beyond maximizing their own self-interest.

White collar crime (WCC) does not differ from blue collar crime in that there are still victims who are seriously or fatally damaged,...

The most obvious difference is the level of physical violence involved, WCC seldom involves murder, rape, arson, burglary or assault. By contrast, WCC is frequently committed in a business or professional setting. Where the victim is an individual, WCC tends to involve establishing a relationship of trust with the victim. Also, more and more often, WCC is enabled by advances in technology and communication. Significantly, the case study notes that WCC do more damage in monetary and emotional loss than do crimes of the street.
It is interesting to note that the way in which WCC is punished can be seen as resulting from two different philosophical schools, Kantian vs. utilitarian methods. The Kantian position holds that WCC is as bad as blue collar crime and needs to be punished on similar levels. According to Kant's argument, people who perpetrate WCC are acting rationally and should therefore suffer the consequences of their actions. The utilitarian method, however, argues that it is in the interest of the greater good to accept plea bargains where criminals turn state's witnesses, in which case punishment is doled out according to the final value utility created (White, 2010).

Corporate culture played a significant role in the banking industry meltdown. There can be little doubt that many firms both encouraged and rewarded unethical, risk-taking behavior in the run up to the meltdown. Just as corporate culture shapes a business' success and failure, an organization's culture also influences whether employees behave with ethics and integrity. The ethical framework that Sethia and Von Glinow propose, as cited in chapter 7 of the textbook, focus on only two basic dimensions of corporate culture, concern for people and concern for performance. Interestingly, this particular framework suffers from the…