Culture Weston Smith And The Ceo Of The Healthsouth...

Culture Weston Smith (2013), former CFO of HealthSouth, states â€Å"the tone of the company may be memorialized through policies and procedures, both written and spoken, but nothing sets the tone more than the everyday actions of the leadership.† At the top of the HealthSouth organization sat Richard Scrushy. As founder and CEO of the company who instilled fear in employees that did not carry out his orders. This set the tone from the top. Do as you’re told or suffer the consequences. When financial results did not meet market expectations, managers were told to fix it. And they did by creating false journal entries and false documentation to back up those entries. There were no checks and balances in place and the accounting system was not linked to the enterprise resource planning software. There was no oversight of managers by a board of directors or an audit committee. The audit committee was not well trained, did not have enough staff, and was not independent of management. Scrushy had complete control of the company and he was obsessed with increasing his earnings trends. He reinforced the idea of top management being family and therefore more loyal to each other than to the unknown public (Lupica, 2014). Impact on Company Management Due to the scandal, 15 HealthSouth executives plead guilty to criminal charges. Due to sentencing by various judges, the standards employed in sentencing were not consistent. Some of the executives served jail time, some were