THE TALE OF TWO CFOS: THE BANALITY OF WRONGDOING AT HEALTHSOUTH CORPORATION.

This paper is a qualitative assessment of corporate wrongdoing at HealthSouth Corporation, using the Banality of Wrongdoing model. The interviewees were two of the CFOs involved in the HealthSouth scandal. Each CFO was independently asked fourteen structured interview questions that measured the following constructs: the culture of competition, ends-biased leadership, missionary zeal, legitimizing myth, the corporate cocoon, banality of wrongdoing and greed. Each CFO's responses were compared to measure the presence or the absence of the construct and the significance of its impact on the unethical behavior at HealthSouth in the period from its founding in 1984 until the fraud was exposed in 2003. The study found that the variables used to measure unethical behavior based on the Banality of Wrongdoing Model were an effective tool for performing a diagnostic mapping of an ethically troubled organization. The study also determined that the unethical activities undertaken by HealthSouth were not unthinking illicit behavior as originally expected but were intentional and calculated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]