Toxic Contributory Factors - Assignment Example

According to the Success Chain (2010), “at Fannie, CEO Franklin Raines and other executives hid problems in order to get huge pay bonuses. Money was coming in, so no one questioned the faulty lending system. Libertarian activist Fred Smith told CNN that it was a case of “honorable people acting in ways that don’t appear honorable” — greed being the culprit that twisted their perception of right and wrong. Raines received $20 million in compensation after departing Fannie Mae” (Success Chain, 2010, par. 1). Another toxic organization situation was revealed by Burke & Cooper (n.d.) cited “Maria Piresferreira was awarded more than Can$500,000 by the courts in response to her complaint of physical and verbal abuse.

The manager yelled at her, swore at her, accused her of not doing her job, asked her to get away from him, and pushed her away. Her employer’s human resources department (Bell Mobility) did not support her. The judge ruled that companies had to take reasonable action to ensure that employees would not be subjected to physical or verbal abuse or intimidation” (National Post, 2008, FP13 cited by Burke & Cooper, n.d., 21). Impact of Toxic Contributory Factors The discourse presented by Burke & Cooper enumerated financial costs of toxic contributory factors as follows: “for individuals—increased healthcare costs, job loss, loss of personal reputation, and loss of livelihood; for organizations—loss of reputation, staff turnover, diminished job performance, reduced turnover, and potential legal liabilities; for society—increased healthcare costs, income support for those losing their jobs, rehabilitation costs for those injured at.

The assignment "Contributing Factors" addresses the following concerns: what impact did the toxic contributing factors have on the community, city, country, etc.; and what organizational checks and balances were missing. The discourse presented by Burke & Cooper enumerated financial costs of toxic contributory factors as follows: “for individuals—increased health care costs, job loss, loss of personal reputation, and loss of livelihood; for organizations—loss of reputation, staff turnover, diminished job performance, reduced turnover, and potential legal liabilities; for society—increased health care costs, income support for those losing their jobs, rehabilitation costs for those injured at work, and a lack of trust in institutions”.

Further, the pain and the trauma caused by toxic factors inflict psychological harm to individuals. In the case of Frannie Mae, there were clear failure to countercheck the CEO’s activities from internal and external auditing units to immediately discover the alleged cover-up of the dilemma. As indicated by Gordon, “the regulators alleged an accounting fraud at Washington-based Fannie Mae that included manipulations to reach quarterly earnings targets so that Raines, Howard, Spencer and other company executives could pocket hundreds of millions in bonuses from 1998 to 2004”.

In Bell Mobility’s case, there was a lack of performance evaluation and appraisals for managers to reveal the nature of their behavior and performance at work.