Martha Stewart and Her Crime of Insider Trading
Martha Stewart was charged with conspiracy, making false statements to authorities, and obstruction of justice as well as criminal securities frauds since she attempted to prop the stock value of her firm. These actions are considered very unethical since they only aimed at benefiting her and the entire company while neglecting other many people needs and demands. Even though she had good intentions for her company as well as business with the aim of avoiding unnecessary losses, which could result into a total downturn. This has resulted to heated debated since free markets support such actions while the opponents disapprove of these deeds claiming that the usage of privileged information and data is very unfair since it enriches a few people at the same time bringing others massive damages (Thorpe & Thorpe, 2012).
It is evident that Martha Stewart had full knowledge about the ethics applicable in the type of her business she was engaging into as well as in trading stocks. However, it may occur that she had no reasonable information concerning the ethical issues facing her. In this case, Martha Stewart was fully aware of the situation and the consequences, as well. Martha Stewart displayed her morality when she lied to the U.S. authorities’ knowingly perfect well that it was illegal and unethical. This implies that her actions or deeds were analyzed using the egoism philosophy, where she proceeded with the unethical move in order to maximize self-interest rather than of other parties involved. Additionally, she considered it fair and even acceptable to completely ignore and avoid the personal losses facing her company and thus she never bothered warning the shareholders about the approaching losses. Therefore, she defrauded as well as misled all her shareholders simply because they were given false information about the share being sold (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2008).
References
Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2008). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Thorpe, E., & Thorpe, S. (2012). Pearson CSAT manual 2012: Civil services aptitude test. Chandigarh: Pearson.
