Article: As Satyam Seeks Buyer, Customers Seek Exit: Fraud Fallout

This article was from the magazine Information Week: Paul McDougall. As Satyam Seeks Buyer, Customers Seek Exit. Information Week, Issue 1,223 , pg 24.

This article discusses the scandal that Satyam is currently undergoing due to the companies Chairman Ramalinga Raju unethical behavior. Ramalinga admitted to falsifying the company's cash position by as much as one billion dollars. They also overstated their quarterly earning and revenue. The company is also under investigation for submitting fake employee numbers and other data.
Satyam is an Indian IT outsourcer that provides services to some U.S. companies such as: Selective Insurance Group, SanDisk, Caterpillar and State Farm. They provide IT staff requirements for these companies that need IT project assistance such as the buildout of an ERP system. Due to the scandal they are facing some of their current customers are unhappy with their services because Satyam has not been able to complete projects due to their financial difficulty. The companies I briefly mentioned that currently have contracts with this company are looking to terminate their contracts.
The company is seeking new ownership in hope of distancing themselves from the scandal. They are looking for an investor to take a 51% stake in the company. Some of the interested investors are: Larsen & Turbo and IBM.
This article relates to our topic which will be discussed this week which is on Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems. The company Satyam is in trouble right now because upper management made unethical decisions. As a result they have not only affected the company but their customers as well. The companies which relied and trusted them as a company were lied to and now their projects are not complete and the companies are in a bind with Satyam which can't deliver what they promised. The book discusses some recent cases that demonstrate failed ethical judgement by senior management. The repercussions of these decisions affected a lot of people who trusted these companies.
When establishing a company you design monitoring policies in order to prevent what Satyam is currently undergoing. Although this is supposed protect the integrity of the company it doesn't control the acts that human beings take. Information systems can be used to track a lot of things within a company but one thing it can't do is control human behaviors.