Introduction 介绍
Businesses play an instrumental role in promoting the growth and development of economies around the globe. In line with this, they not only help the economy through creation of employment opportunities but also contribute directly to the growth of production levels of economies. As a result, there are numerous laws and regulations that have been instituted to ensure businesses are operated in a way that ensures their sustainability not only in the short run but also in the long run. One of the major areas that these laws and regulations target is promoting ethical conduct among businesses. Despite the effort by governments and other regulators to promote ethical conduct in businesses, there are still numerous cases of unethical conduct in businesses that are reported every year. This paper explores the American International Group (AIG) scandal, which was unearthed in 2005, from an ethical perspective. In this scandal, it was established that AIG’s executive team, led by Maurice R. Greenberg, manipulated the accounting figures of this company to show that it was performing well, and did not face any financial risks because of transacting in unregulated products. However, by 2005, it was discovered that the company had been tampering with its accounting figures, and when they were corrected several years back, the company lost approximately $2 billion of its value in accounting errors (Maury, McCarthy & Shoaf, 2007). Speaking from this perspective, the paper will apply the ethical theories, egoism and utilitarianism, to analyse this company’s CEO corporate misconduct.
企业在促进全球经济增长和发展方面发挥着重要作用。根据这一点，它们不仅通过创造就业机会来帮助经济，而且还直接促进经济体生产水平的增长。因此，已经制定了许多法律和法规，以确保企业的经营方式不仅在短期内而且在长期内都能确保其可持续性。这些法律法规的主要目标之一是促进道德建设企业间的沟通。尽管政府和其他监管机构努力促进企业道德行为，但每年仍有大量企业不道德行为案例被报告。本文从伦理学的角度探讨了2005年美国国际集团（AIG）丑闻。在这起丑闻中，由莫里斯·R·格林伯格（Maurice R.Greenberg）领导的AIG执行团队操纵了该公司的会计数据，以表明其表现良好，并且没有因交易不受监管的产品而面临任何金融风险。然而，到2005年，人们发现该公司一直在篡改其会计数据，几年前当这些数据被更正时，该公司因会计错误损失了约20亿美元的价值（Maury，McCarthy&Shoaf，2007）。从这一角度出发，本文将运用伦理理论、利己主义和功利主义对该公司CEO的公司不当行为进行分析。
Background (Literature review) 背景（文献综述）
The 21st first century has witnessed an increased call for implementation of measures to promote ethical conduct in businesses and organisations across the globe. Many researchers, scholars and policymakers across the globe have cited unethical conduct of professionals particularly in the financial sectors as one of the major factor that contributed to the global financial crisis of 2007/08 (Ryder, 2016; Van Hoorn, 2015). In his analysis, Ryder (2016) argues that weak regulations in the financial industry that created room for unethical conduct of employees were some of the major factors that contributed to the collapse of a number of large financial institutions that were deemed as “too big to fail”. In a similar argument, Van Hoorn (2015) observes that the lack of, or the weak regulations in the financial sectors played a critical role in creating a favourable environment for unethical behaviour among the executive officers in multinational corporations. With this in mind, these researchers attribute the rise of unethical behaviour among the top management officials of multinational corporations before and during the 2007/08 global financial crisis to weak regulatory systems in the financial sector.
21世纪，越来越多的人呼吁采取措施，促进全球企业和组织的道德行为。全球许多研究人员、学者和决策者都将专业人员的不道德行为（尤其是金融部门的专业人员）列为导致2007/08年全球金融危机的主要因素之一（Ryder，2016；Van Hoorn，2015）。Ryder（2016）在分析中指出，金融行业监管不力为员工的不道德行为创造了空间，是导致许多被视为“太大而不能倒”的大型金融机构倒闭的一些主要因素。Van Hoorn（2015）在一个类似的论点中指出，金融部门缺乏监管或监管不力在为跨国公司高管的不道德行为创造有利环境方面发挥了关键作用。考虑到这一点，这些研究人员将2007/08年全球金融危机之前和期间跨国公司高层管理人员不道德行为的增加归因于金融部门监管体系薄弱。