Amy Cockburn - AF6002 Blog

In 2015 Volkswagen shocked many of their customers, following the scandal which left at least 36,000 of the vehicles they produced with irregularities in terms of their carbon dioxide emission levels. In order for this to happen, VW had fitted many of their diesel cars with a “defeat device” which was able to detect when the vehicle was being tested for emissions, therefore changing the performance of the car in order to improve final results. However, it didn’t just stop at the 36,000 cars affected, following the scandal all over the world environmental, political and regulatory groups cracked down on the company forcing VW to recall over 12 million of their cars across the globe. Following on from this Volkswagens shares fell by about a third, now this just really isn’t good for business so what is the point? One explanation I learnt whilst in one of my university lectures, which shows reasoning behind why a company would commit fraud, is Donald Cressey’s ‘Fraud Triangle Th

After watching the ’BP: $30 Billion Blowout’ documentary on the Deepwater horizon explosion in April 2010, I still can’t believe how horrendous a catastrophe had to happen before multinational oil and gas company BP, decided to take a real focus on the safety of their workers. Following what U.S. president Barack Obama described as the worst environmental disaster in America, BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward became the most hated man in America. However, it wasn’t just an environmental disaster, in the months following came a political uproar and financial crisis. But with oil becoming a necessity to the general public, the risk factor to oil and energy companies will rise year on year because as it said in the documentary; “Oil, we can’t live with it, or without it”. Due to the excessive need for oil in this day and age, consumers will turn to the most common ethical rationalizations, one of which being Klein (2016) theory that during childhood we all learned to instinctively ratio

In the world of business companies may make the decision to merge with, or acquire another company. A merger is when two companies will come together through a number of negotiated deals, with each company having a 50/50 share of the merged company, whereas an acquisition is when one company acquires more than 50% of the other company. There are a couple of different types of mergers, these being; vertical, horizontal and conglomerate. In a vertical merger two companies at different stages in their supply chain process will merge in order to gain market power, for example a car manufacturer choosing to acquire a steel company. In a horizontal merger two companies within the same industry will merge due to synergies, for example the two companies would have the ability to combine forces in order to have a greater outcome, as well as this through a horizontal merger due to there being overall growth of the company size, they will able to gain more efficient economies of scale. In