CEO on CEO Crime

Scene: A debate between Nike CEO Phil Knight and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. The are speaking to an audience dealing with adversity or company criticism

Debate Moderator: I’d like to thank Mr. Knight and Mr. Mackey for volunteering to show up this evening and discuss their views on running a business. Mr. Knight, I’d like to start with you, if you don’t mind.

Knight: Not at all

Debate Moderator: In the past, Nike has been accused of having children illegally working in their Indonesian factories. How did Nike respond to those accusations?

Who’s Really Helping Out the Little Guy? Mackey vs Rozyne

For my conversation, I decided to imagine a conversation between Michael Rozyne and John Mackey discuss their respective company’s relationship with regional/local farmers with Farmer Zack Fisher, a small-scale local farmer looking to market his produce to supermarkets.

The Rationalization of Fraud

With our discussion of Enron this week, I was reminded of an article I read in Audit class about the Psychology of Fraud. I feel as though we often hear stories about different accounting/financial fraud that have happened either in recent or past events and look at the perpetrators as awful, moral-lacking people without considering how one gets to the point of committing fraud.

The article highlights a massive bank fraud by Toby Groves and I felt as though remaking the conversation between Toby and a skeptical interviewer would be able to shed some light on how executives justify committing fraud in their companies.