“In the early part of this decade ethical scandals erupted though corporate America. Corporate Leaders from major companies such as Enron were caught up in scandal’s ranging from fraud, conspiracy, grand larceny to obstruction of justice” (Cross, 2011, p. 76). At the time, the Enron scandal was considered to be one of the most notorious and compelling business ethics cases in modern generations. It’s was a textbook version of what can go wrong in an organization that lacks a true culture of ethical standards. Investors and the media once considered Enron to be the company of the future, but as its demise suggests, it was in reality not a particularly modern business organization, especially in its approach to ethics.
The corporate actions that led to Enron's demise were not only the responsibility of Enron executives larger entities consisting of private and public organization were supposed to monitor and regulate the company's activities and public disclosures. On the surface, Enron appeared to rejected progressive innovations in governance and ethical programs, but instead sought to circumvent systems that were designed to protect the company and its shareholders. Despite the implosion and the apparent regularity of its fraudulent conduct, virtually not one watchdog group in the multilayered system of controls devised to protect the public detected or reported any problems.
This analysis will discuss policy and procedural change that might help strengthen and fortify corporate and governmental efforts to prevent ethical laps that might occur in the future. “Acting ethically in a business context can mean billions of dollars made or lost for corporations, shareholders, and employees and can have far reaching effects on so...
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Works Cited
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Mountain States Employers Council (2006). Ethics: FAQs. Retrieved Feb 24, 2012, from http://www.msec.org/references/fyi_law_reg/view.asp?id+352
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Thomas, C. (2002). The rise and fall of Enron, Journal of Accountancy, 193(4), 41-48.
It's difficult not to be cynical about how “big business” treats the subject of ethics in today's world. In many corporations, where the only important value is the bottom line, most executives merely give lip service to living and operating their corporations ethically.
The American Dream typically involves working hard to build up an organization, maintaining it well, and reaping the benefits. This vision most certainly drove the formation of the energy powerhouse known as the Enron Corporation. The company began as two average sized organizations and within 15 years emerged as America’s seventh largest company. The organization employed close to 21,000 staff members with locations in over 40 nations around the world. Unfortunately, this success was decimated by numerous scandals involved with accounting practices. From lies of profits to questionable dealings, such as concealing debts, the parties involved with running the company had made some fatal errors. The end result left Enron without creditors and investors, leading to the firm to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (British Broadcasting Corporation, Enron Scandal at a Glance). The story of this once remarkable company is one that can be traced from the decisions made from its inception leading all the way to the much publicized trials that ensued.
Enron was a Houston based energy, commodities and services company. When people hear the name Enron they automatically associate their name with one of the biggest accounting and ethical scandals known to date. The documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” provides an in depth examination of Enron and the Enron scandal. The film does a wonderful job of depicting the downfall of Enron and how the corporate culture and ethics were key to Enron’s fall. As the movie suggests, Enron is “not a story about numbers, it is a story about people.”
Ethical behavior, in a general sense, is a definition of moral behavior in regards to lawfulness, societal standards, and things of that nature. In the business world, ethics commonly refer to acceptable and unacceptable business practices within the workplace, and all other related environments. The acceptance of colleges regardless of ethnicity, gender, and beliefs, as well as truthfulness and honesty in relation to finances within the company are examples of ideal ethical business conducts. Unethical business behavior would include manipulating procedures based on bias or discrimination, engaging in activities that promote political gain, as well as blatant fabrication of monetary factors within the company and “can affect organizational performance and is costly to employers, employees, shareholders, and other organizational stakeholders” (Cox 263). When a corporation practices proper ethics, it is representing not only itself in a positive manner, but its partners, shareholders, and clients as well. On the other hand, when an organization partakes in unethical activities, all parties are negatively affected. The collapse of Enron is a major case of unethical conduct in the corporate world, because the circumstances surrounding the firm’s chaotic plunge where so scandalous that it left “creditors wrangling over Enron's skeletal remains” (Helyar) long after the company had seen its demise. There are numerous instances to be mentioned, including deliberate failure to properly report fiscal losses, insider trading, and overall relentlessness. The inclusive purpose of this paper is to further explore the underlining factors that contributed to the downfall of the once powerful Enron, and how a new way of approaching business ethi...
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
Ethical behavior is behavior that a person considers to be appropriate. A person’s moral principals are shaped from birth, and developed overtime throughout the person’s life. There are many factors that can influence what a person believes whats is right, or what is wrong. Some factors are a person’s family, religious beliefs, culture, and experiences. In business it is of great importance for an employee to understand how to act ethically to prevent a company from being sued, and receiving criticism from the public while bringing in profits for the company. (Mallor, Barnes, Bowers, & Langvardt, 2010) Business ethics is when ethical behavior is applied in an business environment, or by a business. There are many situations that can arise in which a person is experiencing an ethical dilemma. They have to choose between standing by their own personal ethical standards or to comply with their companies ethical standards. In some instances some have to choose whether to serve their own personal interests, or the interest of the company. In this essay I will be examining the financial events surrounding Bernie Madoff, and the events surrounding Enron.
After news of the scandal of Enron, one of the hottest items on e-Bay was a 64-page copy of Enron’s corporate code of ethics. One seller/former employee proclaimed it had “never been opened.” In the forward Kenneth L. Lay, CEO of Enron stated, “We want to be proud of Enron and to know that it enjoys a reputation for fairness and honesty and that it is respected (Enron 2).” For a company with such an extensive code of ethics and a CEO who seemed to want the company to be respected for that, there are still so many unanswered questions of what exactly went wrong. I believe that simply having a solid and thorough code of ethics alone does not prevent a company from acting unethically when given the right opportunity.
When an ethical dilemma arises within an organization, it is difficult to separate right and wrong with what is best for the majority. Sometimes the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no.” In 2002, Enron Corporation shows us just that. By 2002, the sixth-largest corporation in America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The case of the Enron scandal is one of the best examples of corporate greed and fraud in America.
In Enron, it was dictatorial and revenue-based to new ideas. Leaders not only fostered a wrong sense of security for employees, paying high wages to keep workers dependent on the system via golden handcuffs, but also may allows employees did unethical behaviors. This repressive and illegal corporate would eventually make company lost creditability, or else, make company
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.
The Enron Corporation was an American energy company that provided natural gas, electricity, and communications to its customers both wholesale and retail globally and in the northwestern United States (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Top executives, prestigious law firms, trusted accounting firms, the largest banks in the finance industry, the board of directors, and other high powered people, all played a part in the biggest most popular scandal that shook the faith of the American people in big business and the stock market with the demise of one of the top Fortune 500 companies that made billions of dollars through illegal and unethical gains (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Many shareholders, employees, and investors lost their entire life savings, investments,
In the aftermath of Enron, Washington Mutual Bank, TYCO, and World Comm these companies went against the grain of what good ethical behavior is and what their respective company’s code of ethics were. The criminal justice system has made it clear that it will not allow companies and their executives to get away with the misuse of public trust by allowing them to make themselves rich at the expense of the employee. Where these crimes are both ethically and morally wrong, the CEO’s of major corporations are being punished by a ...
Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2013). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases: 2011 custom edition (9th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
This paper discusses the role of ethics in corporate governance. I seek to show the application of moral and ethical principles in corporate governance. Ethics is a topic that has generated a lot of interest in the last decade especially after high profile scandals. The failures of prominent companies such as WorldCom, Enron, Merrill lynch and Martha Stewart portrays the lack of corporate ethics. The failure of such business has seen an increased pressure to incorporate ethics in corporate governance. The result of corporate scandals has been eroding investor and public confidence. The entire economic system has experienced some form of stress from loss of capital, a falling stock market and business failures.
Enron was a company founded in the year 1985 based in Houston, USA. It was one of the world's largest energy trading and Distribution Company having an income of nearly hundred billion dollars during 2000 and was also regarded as America’s most Innovative companies for 6 consecutive years by the fortune magazine. In the last quarter of 2001, it was exposed that it’s declared financial condition was maintained significantly by systematized and skillfully premeditated accounting fraud, known thereafter as the Enron scandal. They hid major debts and did not book them in the balance sheet. The inflated figures in their balance sheet shot up their stock price to unprecedented levels, taking advantage of the situation executives with insider information traded in millions of dollars of Enron stocks. The senior executives and insiders were aware of the offshore accounts that were covering up losses for the Organization; the investors were kept in the dark. This sent across a domino effect which resulted in shareholders losing seventy four billion dollars, loss of hundreds of jobs and thousands of investors and employees losing their retirement accounts.