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Ethical issues in enron
Ethical issues in enron
Ethical issues in enron
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Enron was an energy company founded in 1985 that was in the business of “trading commodities, which soon became the largest business site in the world” (Cbc.ca, 2006). By the end of 2001 it was discovered that Enron had created a “complex web of partnerships” (Cbc.ca, 2006) to hide the level of its level of debt and to artificially inflate stock prices. This financial fraud played out in a company whose “ethics code was based on respect, integrity, communication, and excellence (Cengage.com, n.d.). It is evident that these values were a superficial layer of outward facing trust that masked the problems inherent in the company where the espoused values are not the enacted values (Lecture Slides: Slippery Slopes). These problems are “rooted in …show more content…
These problems and the company’s failure to address them led to the creation of an unethical work environment that further exacerbated the extent of the financial fraud. 2.0 PROBLEM SYMPTOMS The problems surrounding the level of power and deregulation of executives, the unethical nature of the company culture, and the availability of complicit partners were manifested throughout every level of the company in the form of unethical behaviour and can be described as symptoms of these greater issues. The waiving of and lack of internal controls designed to prevent fraudulent behaviour in companies was a reality at Enron. This allowed and provided ample opportunity for the executives of the company to engage in unethical behaviour. For example, one …show more content…
The culture promoted by Enron was one of intense competition and achievement that fostered unethical behaviour for fear of losing one’s job or of company failure. Individuals were urged to “make the numbers…[and] if you steal, if you cheat, just don’t get caught” (Cengae.com, n.d.). This sort of unspoken message would have not only created a widespread participation in unethical behaviour but also downplayed the repercussions of this sort of behaviour as the company itself was promoting it, so the internal consequences would be
Reputation is a company’s biggest asset so you would think that organisations would avoid engaging in any sort of business that would put its reputation in jeopardy. Nevertheless, many organisations find their credibility destroyed due to practices that are harmful and illegal, which could land a CEO’s in prison.
I believe that Enron’s top executives, mainly Lay and Skilling, are mainly to blame for the Enron collapse. Lay and Skilling were surely able to lead an effective and efficient company, but they lacked self- control and let their greed get the best of them. They encouraged a competitive environment that, a survival of the fittest mentality, causing employees to constantly worried about their j...
The Enron Corporation was founded in 1985 out of Houston Texas and was one of the world 's major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies that employed over 20,000 employees. This paper will address some of the ethical issues that plagued Enron and eventually led to its fall.
The company has a culture of unquestioning when something wrong surfaced in the company. Take for example the Lockheed documents incident, where the 25000 documents were seen in the company for nearly 3 years before someone voiced his concerns regarding it. This unhealthy culture not only allows unethical practices to prevail, it also hinders company’s growth.
Enron was the world 's biggest and richest company in the late nineteen-nineties. It 's net value reached 70 billion dollars over the course of a decade and crashed and burned in a single year of savage media coverage and brutal criminal investigations. It 's important to understand how individual arrogance, the corporate recklessness, and U.S. greed collaboratively cost the biggest economic scandal of its kind. Enron was founded in nineteen eighty-five by Kenneth Lay as a natural gas company in the Pacific Northwest. Around that time the energy markets of the US were being deregulated, that is transitioning from government control to free-market. Lay hired visionary Jeffrey Skilling. Under his leadership, the company moved to Houston, Texas
Many organizations have been destroyed or heavily damaged financially and took a hit in terms of reputation, for example, Enron. The word Ethics is derived from a Greek word called Ethos, meaning “The character or values particular to a specific person, people, culture or movement” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2007, p. 295). Ethics has always played and will continue to play a huge role within the corporate world. Ethics is one of the important topics that are debated at lengths without reaching a conclusion, since there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s basically depends on how each individual perceives a particular situation. Over the past few years we have seen very poor unethical business practices by companies like Enron, which has affected many stakeholders. Poor unethical practices affect the society in many ways; employees lose their job, investors lose their money, and the country’s economy gets affected. This leads to people start losing confidence in the economy and the organizations that are being run by the so-called “educated” top executives that had one goal in their minds, personal gain. When Enron entered the scene in the mid-1980s, it was little more than a stodgy energy distribution system. Ten years later, it was a multi-billion dollar corporation, considered the poster child of the “new economy” for its willingness to use technology and the Internet in managing energy. Fifteen years later, the company is filing for bankruptcy on the heels of a massive financial collapse, likely the largest in corporate America’s history. As this paper is being written, the scope of Enron collapse is still being researched, poked and prodded. It will take years to determine what, exactly; the impact of the demise of this energy giant will be both on the industry and the
The three main crooks Chairman Ken Lay, CEO Jeff Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow, are as off the rack as they come. Fastow was skimming from Enron by ripping off the con artists who showed him how to steal, by hiding Enron debt in dummy corporations, and getting rich off of it. Opportunity theory is ever present because since this scam was done once without penalty, it was done plenty of more times with ease. Skilling however, was the typical amoral nerd, with delusions of grandeur, who wanted to mess around with others because he was ridiculed as a kid, implementing an absurd rank and yank policy that led to employees grading each other, with the lowest graded people being fired. Structural humiliation played a direct role in shaping Skilling's thoughts and future actions. This did not mean the worst employees were fired, only the least popular, or those who were not afraid to tell the truth. Thus, the corrupt culture of Enron was born. At one point, in an inter...
In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko stated, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms: greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind” (Mali, 2013, para. 8). This quote accurately identifies the motivation behind the actions of Bernie Madoff and Enron. Both Madoff and Enron were greedy in conducting business. Both violated corporate ethical issues as they acted fraudulently to steal money from clients and shareholders. Bernie Madoff was a once famous stockbroker, investment advisor, and financier prior to committing fraud and running the largest financial scheme in American history. He gained people’s trust by his reputation and the contents of his resume. Ultimately, his Ponzi scheme scammed hundreds and thousands of dollars out of the pockets of his clients. Enron, a natural gas company, hid a debt of billions from failed projects and deals. The company was able to continue to operate due to loopholes and poor financial reporting. Both of these cases are examples of ethical irresponsibility. They are prime examples of why having a code of ethics is just not enough. Companies must create a culture that instills a strong sense of ethics and integrity and eliminates anyone who threatens or violates this established culture.
Sherron Watkins was the person who reported Enron and their top executives. Enron notoriously had a culture of haughtiness and untouchable attitudes. Jeff Skilling set the culture in the corporation encouraging his employees do push the limit, be aggressive, innovative, and make new rules and finally making new laws. Furthermore, a culture led by example was to be always breaking the rules. All those words can have multiple meanings. One could read between those lines. Obviously those terms and the culture that had been established were doings illegal acts. Enron also had a list of codes that were not followed. The company like most had a compliance officer. However, Pre Enron the compliance department had a lot of short falls. Today’s Compliance department in general is more concise and more
Enron Corporation was based in Houston, Texas and participated in the wholesale exchange of American energy and commodities (ex. electricity and natural gas). Enron found itself in the middle of a very public accounting fraud scandal in the early 2000s. The corruption of Enron’s CFO and top executives bring to question their ethics and ethical culture of the company. Additionally, examining Enron ethics, their organization culture, will help to determine how their criminal acts could have been prevented.
Enron’s ride as a company was truly a ride of broken dreams. From being one of the top regional gas pipeline traders, to the nation 's 7th largest corporation, to the world’s largest energy trader; and in a matter of 24 days they fell down into a hole of bankruptcy and dishonor. What took Enron 16-years to grow from $10 billion of assets to $65 billion was all gone in a matter of days. While Enron’s story is one of numbers and transactions it is also a story of human tragedy, a story of major misconduct within a top corporation. As shown in the documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Enron became one of the worlds most acclaimed business ethics case of the century. The documentary explored the good, the bad, and the terrible of a company that was once #1.
“When a company called Enron… ascends to the number seven spot on the Fortune 500 and then collapses in weeks into a smoking ruin, its stock worth pennies, its CEO, a confidante of presidents, more or less evaporated, there must be lessons in there somewhere.” - Daniel Henninger.
The main ethical issue with the Enron scandal is that Enron allowed legal loopholes to supersede ethical principles (Bowen & Heath, 2005). Enron used legal principles to justify what they were doing instead of acknowledging that the accounting processes they were using were unethical. Another one of the ethical issues is that Enron faced was that
Through an organizational culture that focused on financial greed for self, illegal accounting practices, conflicts of interest partnerships, illegal business dealings, fraud, negligence, and massive corruption at all levels, the Enron scandal help to create new laws and regulations with stiff penalties if violated (Ferrell, et al, 2013). The federal government implemented the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) (Ferrell, et al, 2013).
They were committing fraud by creative accounting, acting illegally when using insider trading and shredding their documents relevant to the investigation. Next, consider the stakeholders. Anyone who owns stock in the company would suffer, along with every employee. Under the values bullet we can assume that they have none. Greed and power got the better of every one of them.