A judicious reading of the Wall Street Journal leads me to believe that a practice associated with successful business is honesty. As the saying goes, "Honesty is the best policy," the same phrase can be applied in a business setting. Personal experience has many times over shown me that while honesty doesn't generally get you pats on the back, it will certainly help you to avoid slaps in the face. And slaps in the face in business come at the expense of dead presidents - the goal of every successful business to have many of.
Xerox learned this the hard way. On October 4th, the company was forced to pay a lump sum in excess of $284 million to employees who had been given false information as to the true amount available from their pension. The judge found that Xerox was dishonest in their actions and ordered the payment. If Xerox was instead honest about their dealings with their employees, and paid the appropriate sum, the damages Xerox is paying now - both monetarily and press criticism - will hinder their chances to make more money honestly.
The Wall Street Journal
Xerox
Front page of the first issue of The Wall Street J...Sadly, as a result of such actions like Xerox, as well as other businesses that perform in a dishonest fashion, the government has had to create legislation that would prevent companies from trying such actions again. One such type of legislation is a revised version of the 'whistle-blower' law, which was updated on the 3rd of October, 2002. In the past, if an employee became a whistle-blower, all rights (such as pension, severance, etc...) would be waived. It made reporting such actions a difficult act. However the revised law, easily passed by Congress, would allow an employee to retain their earned rights, as well as doing the right thing.
In fact, the...