Bankruptcy of WorldCom Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Bankruptcy of WorldCom - Case Study Example It was at this point the company began drifting. Political behavior is something which is self-serving in nature and is not at all accepted by any organization. Political behavior has a numerous negative consequences which may result in conflicts and disharmony within the organization. Such disharmony and conflicts can be noticed when people in an organization pit against one another or even against the organization. We can observe this kind politics been played by the employees of WorldCom. There was an instance when the Controller of the company David Myers made a false accounting entry of $370 millions as accruals. David Myers first asked the Director of International Fixed costs Mr. Timothy Schneberger to release the above mentioned amount as accruals. But as her refused to do that and also denied to provide the account number to Myers to make the entry, another senior manager in General accounting named Betty Vinson helped Myers in the task. The account number was obtained by Vinson from a lower level analyst in Schneberger's group and after this the entry was made by one of the subordinate of the analyst. This practice of releasing accruals as and when required continued and employees in the General accounting department also started doing the same thing. All this happened without the employees consulting their superiors or the department heads'. One more relevant incident happened when the General accounting department released an amount of $281 millions against line costs from the tax department's accruals and the tax department was not aware of this act until the year 2001. The release of undue and false figures of accruals was easily done by making the employees act one against other. The work that was to be actually done by the respective employees was carried out by employees in a different department who were actually loyal to the top management rather than company. When David Schneeman, the acting CFO of UUNET refused to book 9 line accruals as instructed by David Myers for his business unit, s taff in the department of general accounting made the entry. Finally, it so happened that an amount of $3.3 billions were released in a span of only one year. The corporate environment of WorldCom was not so healthy. The finance department of the company was located at Jackson, Mississippi. The department had none of the senior lawyers located in Jackson. The lawyers were kept away from the inner circle of the company or it's CEO. They were consulted only when the CEO Ebbers felt some necessity. Never was an advice given by the lawyers was like by Mr. Ebbers. He used to convey them personally, his displeasure about the advice, if any, given by them. The culture of WorldCom was created in such a way that the legal function was less influential and was not welcomed by a healthy corporate environment or culture. There was a sever attitude problem among the employees of WorldCom. The attitude of the employees sent a clear message that none of the employees should question their superiors and need to simply do what was instructed to them. Even the senior managers of different departments were not excluded from this. In fact, they used to face personal criticism and threats. A relevant example for this happened in the year 1999. One of the senior managers in the General accounting department was warned by Buddy Yates, director of General Accounting for showing the actual accounting figures in the accounts of the