نظریه رویای آمریکایی کلاه برداری مدیر اجرایی شرکت

In this paper, we first describe a “Broken Trust” theory that was introduced by Albrecht el al. [Albrecht, W. S., Albrecht, C. C., & Albrecht, C. O. (2004). Fraud and corporate executives: Agency, Stewardship and Broken Trust. Journal of Forensic Accounting, 5, 109–130] to explain corporate executive Fraud. The Broken Trust theory is primarily based on an “Agency” theory from economic literature and a “Stewardship” theory from psychology literature. We next describe an “American Dream” theory from sociology literature to complement Albrecht el al.'s (2004) Broken Trust theory. Like the Broken Trust theory, the American Dream theory relates to a “Fraud Triangle” concept to explain corporate executive Fraud. Finally, we provide some anecdotal evidence from recent high profile corporate executive Fraud to explore the American Dream theory. We conclude our thoughts on corporate executive Fraud from a teaching perspective.

In this paper, we first describe a “Broken Trust” theory that was introduced by Albrecht, Albrecht, and Albrecht (2004) to explain corporate executive Fraud. The Broken Trust theory is primarily based on an “Agency” theory from economic literature and a “Stewardship” theory from psychology literature. We next describe an “American Dream” theory from sociology literature to complement Albrecht et al. (2004) Broken Trust theory. Like the Broken Trust theory, the American Dream theory relates to a “Fraud Triangle” concept to explain corporate executive Fraud. We are motivated to explain corporate executive Fraud because whenever corporate Fraud has been studied, CEOs and CFOs are most involved. For example, the COSO-sponsored study by Beasley, Carcello, and Hermanson (1999) found that CEOs were involved in 72 percent of the financial statement Fraud cases. The next most frequent perpetrators in descending order of frequency were the controller, COO, vice presidents, and members of the board. We define “corporate executive Fraud” as follows. First, a corporate scandal is a scandal involving allegations of unethical behavior on the part of a company. It follows that a corporate accounting scandal is a scandal involving unethical behavior in accounting, that is, accounting Fraud. Accounting Fraud includes intentional financial misrepresentations (e.g., falsification of accounts) and misappropriations of assets (e.g., theft of inventory) (AICPA, 2002). Intentional financial misrepresentations involving the management of a company are referred to as corporate executive Fraud, whereas misappropriations of assets involving the employee of a company are referred to as employee Fraud. Taken together, corporate executive Fraud is intentional financial misrepresentations by trusted executives of public companies, which typically involve creative methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of corporate assets, or underreporting the existence of liabilities. Finally, we provide some anecdotal evidence from recent high profile corporate executive Fraud1 to explore the American Dream theory. We are well aware of the fact that anecdotal evidence is weak evidence without empirical validation. However, our paper is written to provoke thoughts on corporate executive Fraud in American society and to stimulate further empirical research on social variables of executive Fraud. We also believe that a better understanding of corporate executive Fraud would help to address some issues from a teaching perspective in our concluding thoughts.

We believe that the exaggerated emphasis on monetary success incorporated in American Dream will continue to be a catalyst for Fraud by corporate executives in the United States.11 In this paper, we only provide some anecdotal evidence from recent high profile corporate executive Fraud to explore the American Dream theory. Our aim is to provoke thoughts on corporate executive Fraud in American society and to stimulate further empirical research on social variables of executive Fraud. In addition, such future research may help to address the following three issues relating to corporate executive Fraud from a teaching perspective. The first issue is the lack of Fraud courses in business schools. We agree with Albrecht et al. (2004) that business schools are partly to blame for perpetuating corporate Fraud in that they have not provided sufficient ethics training to students and have failed to teach students about Fraud.12 One author of this paper has taught an accounting Fraud examination course (supported by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners) for 2 years, and it is his experience that “most business school graduates would not recognize a Fraud if it hit them between the eyes” (Albrecht et al., 2004, p. 124). The second issue is the lack of Fraud content in accounting courses. We agree with Ketz's13 view that today's accounting students are graduating without the necessary tools to fight Fraud and strongly endorse his seven recommendations to remedy this problem. His recommendations are: (1) the accounting industry must raise salaries; (2) educators must stop watering down courses with watered-down accounting textbooks; (3) accounting courses need to focus more on the practical content; (4) students should study financial statement analysis; (5) students need more work in Information Systems; (6) accounting firms should utilize more senior, more experienced individuals on an audit; (7) accounting firms need to supplement the training of newly minted accounting graduates. The third issue is the perfunctory punishment for academic dishonesty. We believe that business schools should actively curtail academic dishonest behavior and rigorously enforce punishments for such deviant behavior. Recent surveys have shown that dishonesty among students appears to be increasing. For example, the Josephson Institute of Ethics14 found that the percentage of high school students who admitted to cheating on exams had increased from 71 percent in 2001 to 74 percent in 2002, the percentage of high school students who admitted lying to their parents had increased from 92 percent in 2001 to 93 percent in 2002, the percentage of high school students who said they would lie to get a job had increased from 27 percent in 2001 to 37 percent in 2002, and the percentage of high school students who admitted to taking something from a store increased from 35 percent in 2002 to 38 percent in 2003. Similarly, research at the University of California at Berkeley15 found that there had been a 115 percent increase in reported cases of student dishonesty between 1995 and 2000. Although these studies are silent on whether an increasing population of dishonest students will result in an increasing population of dishonest workforce, we believe dishonest business students are more likely to carry on their cheating behavior into the business world. For example, Sims (1993) reported a correlation between cheating in college and unethical behavior in the workplace, and Ogilby (1995) found that accounting students who engage in questionable unethical academic behavior also are likely to do the same as accounting professionals.