A poll commissioned and released on December 15 by a project initiated to serve the interests of high-level corporate executives who are concerned about the ethical conduct of their corporation has exposed a concern among one out of every five corporate executives of publicly traded companies that their own companies "do not comply with federal, state or local laws." Further, two out of every five executives reported a concern that corporate leaders "put narrow short-term goals ahead of the long-term benefit of the company." The poll, commissioned by Voices for Corporate Responsibility (Voices), was conducted by Harris Interactive.
Voices is a project of Grant & Eisenhofer (G&E) and Mehri & Skalet (M&S). Both law firms have been at the forefront of addressing corporate malfeasance impacting shareholders, workers, and consumers. G&E has been counsel in some of the largest securities fraud class actions and recently served as counsel to one of the main whistleblowers in litigation that led to a $2.3 billion settlement with Pfizer with regard to its marketing activities. Attorneys from M&S have been counsel in some of the nation's most prominent employment discrimination cases including cases against Texaco and The Coca-Cola Company.
According to poll results, 22 percent of those responding answered "yes" to the question: "Have you ever been concerned that the actions of a company that you have worked for either now or in the past do not comply with federal, state or local laws?"
"What we are seeing is a crack in the confidence level of corporate executives who at one time may have believed that their company could do no wrong, "said Reuben Guttman, G&E partner and co-founder of Voices. "Now as short-term corporate decision making has led to layoffs of even high-level executives, these employees are perhaps beginning to look at things differently."
"It is disturbing that 22 percent of the respondents believe that their own companies may be breaking the law," said Cyrus Mehri, partner at the law firm of Mehri & Skalet, PLLC and co-founder of Voices "Skirting the law may just be business as usual, but, sadly the impact can be devastating to consumers, employees and shareholders."
According to the poll, 42 percent of those responding also answered "yes" to the question: "Have you ever been concerned that a company that you have worked for either now or in the past put narrow short-term goals ahead of the long-term benefit of the company?"
"This finding provides some insight into a root cause of our nation's financial crisis," said Jay Eisenhofer, managing partner at Grant & Eisenhofer, and co-founder of Voices. "When corporate directors and officers are motivated by compensation plans that reward them based on the short-term performance of their company, the long-term health of a corporation and ultimately employee job stability is often sacrificed."
Majorities of 68 percent or more also answered "yes" to the following questions:
· Do you believe that unethical practices regularly take place in corporations? (70 percent)
· With regard to the credit crisis, do you believe that senior executives in the financial services industry understood the potential consequences of their conduct? (68 percent)
· Do you believe that wrongdoing by senior executives led to the credit crisis? (74 percent)
