An organization's culture is the determinant of both its failure and success. Wells Fargo built an organizational culture on the virtues of transparency, non-retaliation for honest feedback, customer-centeredness and the desire to put the interest of stakeholders before profit; ideally, the horses before the stagecoach (Gujarathi & Barua, 2017). However, the supposedly strong culture has become the biggest reason for the company's recent woes initiated by the Senate banking committee. Wells Fargo managers have developed a practice of creating intense quota requirements for employees for cross-selling. The pressurized employees are struggling to meet the quotas to be eligible for their bonuses and other incentives. The pressure to meet deadlines on impossible cross-selling tasks has prompted employees to open the reported unauthorized two million accounts (Gujarathi & Barua, 2017). Moreover, the culture of retaliation against employees has led to the problem becoming more culturally embedded as a practice.
The most affected stakeholders are the account owners exposed to gross misuse by the company's unethical practices. Illegal accounts and credit cards affect the ability of the account holders to acquire credit in future because of deterioration of creditworthiness (Gujarathi & Barua, 2017). The public's confidence in the banking system has been dramatically shaken because people have become sceptical about trusting the banking institutions. Moreover, the investors have been misled using falsified profitability of cross-selling.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The stakeholder management approach is a holistic framework that can promote ethical decision making. The approach has purposely set aside a criterion for stakeholder mapping to evaluate the stakeholders' participation and needs, vision and goals setting, which is aimed at enhancing engagement as well as an action plan to ensure that opportunities are developed for the benefit of all stakeholders without compromising ethical values and principles.
Response: Wells Fargo can use the stakeholders' management approach to cultivate trust and relationship through reexamining the role of cross-selling in relationship to organizational values and ethics. Wells Fargo can modify the cross-selling function while keeping in mind the stakeholders' engagement element to create harmony between acceptable practices and the company limits (De Pascalis, 2018). Further, the company has to recalibrate its overall compensation policies through stakeholder mapping that highlight the needs of each stakeholder. If the company can develop compensation policies that do not compromise works ethics, it is possible that broken relationships and trust can be repaired. Finally, the company should consider developing an action plan that takes advantage of opportunities for growth while constantly revisiting the organizational goals to ensure that it is within the scope of its values and principles.
References
De Pascalis, F. (2018). Sales culture and misconduct in the financial services industry: an analysis of cross-selling practices. Business Law Review , 39 (5).
Gujarathi, M. R., & Barua, S. K. (2017). Wells Fargo: Setting the stagecoach thundering again. Case Research Journal , 37 (2), 81-106.
