Wells Fargo, the largest California-based bank, is scandal-ridden and facing a $185 million fine for violating state and federal laws. Its widespread illegal sales practices, including opening two million shame deposit and credit-card accounts without customers’ knowledge. Since 2011, Wells Fargo has fired 5,300 employees and managers for taking the scandal responsibility, while without any executive in charge.
Based on the Kantian principles by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), he believes that three elements can determine moral worth. The first one is “motives”. Having an intrinsic motive is all-important for moral actions. People are autonomous agent and free to seek self-interest or others’ interests. But it is based on that everyone respects others’ humanity, and treats them as humans.…show more content… The moral value of an action is manifest in the effort performed during the process, but not in the success of realizing some desires or purposes. A person should never treat another person only as a means to an end. In this case, customers were used as a tool for increasing the bank’s revenues. Also the employees brought to light that they were pushed by the upper management to open the sham accounts because of the bank’s aggressive sales practices. If they failed to meet the sales goals, they would be fired. Similarly, employees and managers were just used as “human capital” or “money maker”.
The third principle defines the duty as “the necessity of an action performed from respect for the moral law”. Everyone has some basic moral prescriptions, such as “do not lie” or “do not steal”, etc. However, in this sham account scandal, Wells Fargo not only lied to the customers but also stole from customers. Wells Fargo misuses the confidential information of customers without telling them and continues to earn fees from these unauthorized
