1

Blinded by Success

Izak Munoz

South Texas College

ORGL-3322-KV2-Behavior/Ethics/Leadership I-CBE

Dr. Scott Sparrow

Dec 1st, 2021

2

Blinded by Success

Blinded by success can happen in the blink of an eye. Especially if you’d had the same

success as Dennis Kozlowski had in the twenty years of being the Chief Executive Officer of

Tyco International: a multi-billion-dollar company. Dennis Kozlowski played a monumental part

in the company securing 88 deals worth over fifteen billion dollars in the short span of six years.

How can you not let that get into your head just a bit? Knowing that your sole contribution to a

company turned the tide in such an enormous way that you set yourself up for life, financially

speaking. I’d imagine its simply human nature to let success get into our heads. There is,

however, a difference in rewarding yourself for your hard work, and committing fraudulent

activities claiming its “for the sake of the company”. Unfortunately, Dennis Kozlowski

committed the latter (Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large, 2021).

Dennis Kozlowski was a man that loved the extravagant life. Everything was always a go

big or go home ordeal for him. His greed for more lavish and expensive things is what caused his

vices to turn unethical and unacceptable in every sense of the word. The main traits that Dennis

Kozlowkski demonstrates are those that lean towards being vices. Kozlowski is full of greed,

shamelessness, and lack of morality. He demonstrates greed by always wanting more assets for

himself and never sharing any of the wealth. On the contrary he borrows an absurd amount of

money from the company for his personal spending. Kozlowski is shameless because even when

caught and on trial, he says “…There was no criminal intent here, nothing was hidden, there

were no shredded documents. All the information the prosecutors got was directly off the books

and records of the company…” (Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large, 2021). Kozlowkski exhibits

no sense of shame here, even admitting that he committed those fraudulent actions but stating

that the proof was an open book that anyone could have checked all this time. This lack of
3

morality is what is truly frightening from a CEO. The lack of remorse he shows to not care how

It affected his employees or the impact he could have had, had he shared his wealth towards his

less fortunate employees. One must truly be in a delusional state of greed and blinded by so

much power and success to the point that you are at one point in your life charged with over six

hundred million dollars’ worth of assets from the very company you built. Mr. Kozlowski was so

blinded by his success, that he thought all this money spent was for the good of the company and

in the end was going to somehow benefit everyone, when in reality, the only person that was

benefitting was the CEO himself. You indeed have to be so blinded by your own success that

you let this happen under your command “…In 2005, Kozlowski was convicted of crimes in

relation to alleged unauthorized bonuses of eighty-one million dollars, in addition to other large

purchases and investments…” (“Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large”, 2021). Now this is just the

tip of the iceberg with how unethically and immorally Mr. Kozlowski spent and managed Tyco

Internationals’ money. Not very wisely if you ask me. It would be a different circumstance if this

was a one-time mistake, or Mr. Kozlowski just made a bad call. No, this was far worse than that

because what he developed is one of the worst vices you can develop, a habitual vice. You see,

Dennis Kozlowkski was so blinded by his success, that at one point he no longer felt ethically

challenged about the fact that he was taking money from Tyco International, he somehow

brainwashed himself into thinking that he actually deserved everything he took from the

company. Just take into account the number he was accused of at the end of it all, six hundred

million dollars’ worth of assets. Think of how much he could have improved the health benefits

for all Tyco International employees with six hundred million dollars. Or how much more he

could have improved employee moral by giving everyone an extra vacation day and also could

have pushed salesmen to perform better by giving them cash bonuses. I could think of a thousand
4

better ways that money could have been used for the actual betterment of the company, but

instead, Dennis Kozlowski chose greed and fortune. He even stooped so low, that he used one

million dollars of Tyco internationals money to host his spouse’s extravagant birthday party. In

his early years of being CEO, maybe you could have made a case for Mr. Kozlowski and how

virtuous he had become. After all, he did work his way from the bottom up. He also did not

inherit the position, as he came from humble beginnings. One would think given that fact that he

would carry a humble chip on his shoulder or have a soft spot for the middle class, as he once

was a part of, but as the moral of the story goes, Dennis Kozlowski is blinded by his own success

and greed (Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large, 2021).

Going against your superior, one almost always ends up on the losing side. More often

than not you will find going against a superior ends up in your request being denied (the

probable outcome, if you’re lucky), or worse, can lead into disciplinary action. That’s why I do

not blame the employees for not doing “more” to stop Dennis Kozlowski and all the unethical

actions he committed in relation to the misuse of Tyco International Assets. From Asch’s

experiments we learn that in some unfortunate circumstances, there is no choice but to conform.

If you see everyone going with the flow of turning a blind eye to Mr. Kozlowski, you do not

want to be the loan employee that sticks out like a sore thumb and question the authority of your

superiors. If you do that, you’ll start getting labeled in a negative manner and no one would want

to be your acquaintance and it would sure make your job environment that much more hostile.

And you most certainly will not disobey any orders from your superiors, which brings us to

Milton’s experiment. Subordinates do not dare question the authority of management, even less

the authority of the man in charge. If the CEO of the company you work for tells you to jump,

nine out of ten times you will say how high, because you want to look good Infront of your
5

superiors. Regardless of this, at the end of the day, not even your superiors can take away your

moral code, and by your own virtue, you will always choose the morally right thing to do.

Regarding the future of Tyco International, the CEO of Starbucks is an outstanding

example of the golden standard in terms of what qualities to look for in their next CEO. Kevin

Johnson (CEO of Starbucks) turned a disastrous situation into a valuable lesson that not only he

himself learned from, but also managed to educate his thousands of employees under him. This

is what great management from the top is “…Starbucks announced it would temporarily close

eight thousand stores to conduct unconscious bias training…” (Tangdall, 2018). When the CEO

recognizes that his subordinates lack training and are not compassionate enough towards their

customers, Mr. Johnson immediately takes ownership and admits he is at fault and takes swift

action to change that. That right there is what you call leading by example.

If I had to differentiate the leadership styles between Mr. Kozlowski and Mr. Johnson, I

would most definitely say that Kozlowski has more of an Autocratic leadership style, while

Johnson’s style would lean towards Affiliative. Both are very effective in their own way if used

correctly, but more often than not, when having an Autocratic way of leading, the power tends to

get to one’s head and starts clouding your judgment into thinking that your opinion is the only

one that’s right and at that point you won’t even listen to the advisors you hired to consult you.

Kozlowski was very much self-absorbed and had no regard for the consequences of his actions

and decided to buy items via invoices that were supposed to be for the company but in reality,

were ending up in his thirty-million-dollar apartment (that was of course paid for by Tyco)

(Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large).

Johnson’s style of leadership swift actions let you know he is committed to the

betterment of his company by implementing the third-party policy due to the unfortunate
6

incident, but what matters is that Johnson took swift action, hence showing his robust ethical

commitment. If situations were swapped, I have no doubt in my mind that Kozlowski would try

his very best to pay the two gentlemen bribery money to not make scandal out of the situation so

he can sweep everything under the rug, being how unethical Dennis is (Dennis Kozlowski:

Living Large).

An improvement that could drastically improve the overall ethics at Tyco International is

that the new CEO can implement a checks and balances ordeal where the CEO cannot approve

invoices or anything involving large amounts of cash unless approved by a council, and decision

must be made via voting.

 7

References

“Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large” (2021) Ethics Unwrapped, p.1

https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/case-study/dennis-kozlowski-living-large

Tangdall, S. (2018) “The CEO of Starbucks And The Practice Of Ethical Leadership” p. 8

https://www.scu.edu/leadership-ethics/resources/the-ceo-of-starbucks-and-the-practice-of-

ethical-leadership/