Agency Theory And Stewardship Theory

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act and the Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act, was signed into law on July 30, 2002, by President George W. Bush as a direct response to the corporate financial scandals of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco International (Arens & Elders, 2006; King & Case, 2014;Rezaee & Crumbley, 2007). Fraudulent financial activities and substantial audit failures like those of Arthur Andersen and Ernst and Young had destroyed public trust and investor confidence in the accounting profession. The debilitating consequences of these perpetrators and their crimes summoned a massive effort by the government and the accounting profession to fight all forms of corruption through regulatory, legal, auditing, and accounting changes.

SOX enactment is an act that was formulated as a result of corporate scandals from Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, and Tyco. However, Congress succumbed to pressure from the public for the government to take action about the unethical behavior of company executives of publicly –traded companies. Thus, the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) was to restore the integrity and public confidence in financial markets. During these scandals, there were flagrant disregard to Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP). For example, according to Washington Post (2005), WorldCom

Managers and shareholders are the utmost contributors of these conflicts, hence affecting the entire structural organization of a company, its managerial system and eventually to the company's societal responsibility. A corporation is well organized with stipulated division of responsibilities among the arms of the organizational structure, shareholders, directors, managers and corporate officers. However, conflicts between managers in most firms and shareholders have brought about agency problems. Shares and their trade have seen many companies rise to big investments. Shareholders keep the companies running

The 1990s and the early 2000s was a time that the world witness an explosion of fraud in the corporate world. Corporate fraud like Enron, HealthSouth, Waste Management, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, etc. was so disturbing that lawmakers felt the need for a law to help curb down these frauds. Lawmakers came out with Sarbanes Oxley named after Senator Paul Sarbanes and Rep. Michael G. Oxley, the co-sponsors of the act. The purpose of this essay is to discuss some of the tax advantages and disadvantages of Sarbanes-Oxley and to explore whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for small businesses as well as the tax benefits for those businesses.

The Sarbanes-Oxley is a U.S. federal law that has generated much controversy, and involved the response to the financial scandals of some large corporations such as Enron, Tyco International, WorldCom and Peregrine Systems. These scandals brought down the public confidence in auditing and accounting firms. The law is named after Senator Paul Sarbanes Democratic Party and GOP Congressman Michael G. Oxley. It was passed by large majorities in both Congress and the Senate and covers and sets new performance standards for boards of directors and managers of companies and accounting mechanisms of all publicly traded companies in America. It also introduces criminal liability for the board of directors and a requirement by

The purpose of this memo is to provide you with information on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX Act) and to describe the importance of its implementation, per your request. The SOX Act was first introduced in the house as the “Corporate and Auditing Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency Act of 2002” by Michael Oxley on February 14, 2002. Paul Sarbanes, a Democrat U.S. Senator, collaborated with Mr. Oxley, a Republican US Senator, creating significant bipartisan support. The SOX Act was enacted by the end of July 2002 in response to recent corporate accounting scandals. The twin scandals that were impetus for the legislation involved the corporations of Enron and WorldCom.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) is a legislation enacted in 2002 under the sponsorship of U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and U.S. Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH). The law introduced increased government oversight for publicly held companies. It also imposes additional management responsibilities and corporate operating costs on companies trading under SEC regulations. Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted in direct response to a number of corporate accounting scandals, including those of Enron, Tyco International, and WorldCom.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also known as SOX Act, is a federal law that was passed on July 30, 2002, by Congress. This law was established to help set new or enhance laws for all United States accounting firms, management, and public company. The SOX Act would now make corporate executives accountable for their unethical behavior. This bill was passed due to the action of the Enron and Worldcom scandal, which cost their investors billions of dollars, caused their company to fold, and questioned the nations' securities markets.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passes in 2002 in response to a handful of large corporate scandals that occurred between the years 2000 to 2002, resulting in the losses of billions of dollars by investors. Enron, Worldcom and Tyco are probably the most well known companies that were involved in these scandals, but there were a number of other companies guilty of such things as well. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed as a way to crackdown on corporations by setting new and improved standards that all United States’ public companies and accounting firms were and are required to abide by. It also works to hold top level executives accountable for the company, and if fraudulent behaviors are discovered then the executives could find themselves in hot water. The punishments for such fraudulence could be as serious as 20 years jail time. (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The primary motivation for the act was to prevent future scandals from happening, or at least, make it much more difficult for them to happen. The act was also passed largely to protect the people—the shareholders—from corporations, their executives, and their boards of directors. Critics tend to argue that the act is to complicated, and costs to much to abide by, leading to the United States losing its “competitive edge” in the global marketplace (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The Sarbanes-Oxley act, like most things, has its pros and cons. It is costly; studies have shown that this act has cost companies millions of

​The Board of Directors is composed of various individuals coming from wide sets of backgrounds. Eric Lefkofsky is a co-founder of the Company, has served as the Company's Executive Chairman since its inception until August 5, 2013, and served in the Office of the Chief Executive from February 28, 2013 until his appointment to Chief Executive Officer on August 5, 2013. Jason Child has served as Chief Financial Officer since December 2010. From March 1999 through December 2010, Mr. Child held several positions with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), including Vice President of Finance, International from April 2007 to December 2010, Vice President of Finance, Asia from July 2006 to July 2007, Jeffrey Holden has served as our Senior Vice President-Product Management since April 2011 and has

The Sarbanes Oxley Act came to existence after numerous scandals on financial misappropriation and inaccurate accounting records. The nature of scandals made it clear there are possible measure that could be used to prevent future occurrence of financial scandals. And the existence and effectiveness of Sarbanes Oxley has caused

Another very important element of the Stewardship Theory is the more relaxed views on the roles of the Chairman of the Board and the Chief Executive Officer. The agency theory supports a specific delineation of the roles to make sure there is not a conflict of interest or an abuse of power such as perks and bonuses which is in stark

The consequence of these problems is that the principals may lack trust in their agents and they may therefore need to put in place mechanisms, such as audit, to reinforce this trust. Agency theory is concerned in solving these problems that arise in an agency relationship. A simple agency theory model suggests that, as a result of information asymmetry and self-interest, principals lack reasons to trust their agents and will seek to resolve these concerns by putting in place mechanisms to align the interests of agents with the principals and to reduce the scope for information asymmetry and opportunistic behaviour (Audit Quality Forum, 2005). According to Jensen and Meckling (1976), agency theory attempts to describe the agency relationship in the form of a metaphorical contract. That is, agency theory is a contract in which the principal is represented by management in executing the strategic goals and objectives and the auditors in providing assurance in their

Jeff Bezos the Founder and CEO of Amazon believes in the importance of customer satisfaction. This not only increases the customer base but it creates customer loyalty, some customers only buy goods from Amazon because their expectations will be met. They are several supplier selection criteria’s that company’s such as Amazon use; delivery, convenience, cost, quality of safety, service, social responsibility, agility and risk. Amazons main focus is customer service, distribution

The agency problems arise due to an issue with incentives. Distributions of incentives are one of the factors that lead to agency problem. An agent may be motivated to act in a manner that is not favourable for the principal if the agent is presented with an incentive to act in this way. For example, in the plumbing example earlier, the plumber may make three times as much as the money by recommending a service the agent does not need. An incentive three times the pay is present, and this causes the agency problem to arise. One of the parties will feel un-balanced due to the distribution of incentives, disagreement occur.