My cousin Kara just got married recently. She is about six years older than I am and has graduated from college and is ready to settle down. She has been planning her wedding for almost a year. It took a lot of time and effort to make her wedding day perfect. Just finding the dress took six months. On the day of the wedding tons of things went wrong but in the end it all worked out and it was beautiful.
I got a chance to talk to her and ask her some questions about how she felt about everything. She told me that the biggest adjustment she had to make was knowing that she was all grown up. She felt like the real world had finally come along and she was no longer dependent on her parents. That scared her to death. She said that she loved David her fiancé more than anything and she knew she was making the right decision, but the fact that she was going to be with him forever took some time to get used to also. Not only did she have to worry about the planning and spending, she was also becoming very emotional about everything as the day drew closer. Her parents are divorced so that made her planning process even more difficult. Each parent gave her a certain amount of money but neither would really get involved in helping her get everything together. She lives in St. Louis and both of her parents live more than a eight hundred miles away from her. So she felt basically on her own from her family.
Another major adjust...
Ethics policies are implemented in almost all businesses. Companies search for candidates that will be moral in their actions so they can ensure long-term financial success. Throughout history we have seen businesses fall due to unethical behavior. In recent years the business Enron Corporation is best known for the scandal that led to the bankruptcy of a company with more than 60 billion dollars in assets. We will examine the circumstances that led to the downfall of Enron, how the scandal was realized, as well as the outcome of one of the largest bankruptcies in American history; a case that exemplifies unethical professional behavior.
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...
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
She has two daughters 20 and 27 years of age. They waited eight years before starting a family due her husband being gone a lot because of his military committed. During this time my mother started to embark on her dream to go to college. She worked, went to school and took care of the family all at the same time. She is now a therapist that works with children with special needs. Having children was a great experience because she has always worked with kids. She was always there to listen to her daughters because she stayed home when her girls were younger. This was a decision she and her husband made
The overall view clarification of the issue illustrates the evolution of Enron’s innovations and fraud. The business records of the company financial economists and accountant’s uncovered considerable number information and incentive issues. The issues both complicate and potentially resolve the appraised valuation questions such as; earnings growth, stock splits, dividend changes, free cash flow limitations, share price-based compensation and hedging of market risks. The Enron Company contributed large sums of money to non-profit organizations for the purpose of acting on probable ethical issues before they become legal dilemmas. The company failed to inform its consumers of the business decisions made even though they had knowledge that the person at the other end of the business deal did not. The Enron Company filed a Chapter 11 to seek bankruptcy protection. The uncertainty of the company’s standings impacted the market’s confidence in...
A sojourner is often described as a short term visitor to a new place or culture, where permanent settlement is not the eventual purpose of the trip or sojourn. Bearing this in mind the term sojourner has been applied to many different groups throughout the years; military personnel, aid workers and students or scholars all fall under this broad umbrella term. In the literature concerning students there is some confusion, as various researchers have failed to make the distinction between ‘International Students’ and ‘Student Sojourners’. The term ‘International Student’ , particularly with respect to American, Australian and Asian research,is often used to describe students that have roots in a minority group (such as Asians or Latino Americans) but have actually been born in the ‘host country’. These students are usually resident in the host country for the duration on their academic program and longer. ‘Student Sojourner’ on the other hand is a term that describes students who may move to a new place or culture for the purpose of academic ad...
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...
She felt that I maintained eye contact and reiterated her responses in a way to made her feel heard. The open-ended questions that I had integrated into the interview allowed her to realize the inconsistencies between her current behavior and her future goals. I big point from her was that I allowed her to do majority of the talking which she believed put her in control and that I wasn’t forcing her into a particular direction of change. She could tell that I wasn’t completely confident in the way that I asked my questions, using a lot of “um’s” and “so’s “. We also discussed how she felt about the amount of pauses I took in order to respond and how this made for a awkward silence, taking away the comfort of the setting. It was also brought up that I could have used more empathy when responding to her as it would of let her knew that I am taking into account the difficulty of the change for
When the children become stranded on the island, the rules of society no longer apply to them. Without the supervision of their parents or of the law, the primitive nature of the boys surfaces, and their lives begin to fall apart. The downfall starts with their refusal to gather things for survival. The initial reaction of the boys is to swim, run, jump, and play. They do not wish to build shelters, gather food, or keep a signal fire going. Consequently, the boys live without luxury that could have been obtained had they maintained a society on the island. Instead, these young boys take advantage of their freedom and life as they knew it deteriorates.
Enron was one of the major energy corporation in America before it went bankrupt. A contributing reason to Enron’s failure was a lack of ethical management. Enron scandal proves that the company infringed the transparency, dignity and responsibility ethical principles of the Global Business Standard Codex (Paine et al. 2005). Effective management practices help businesses manage risk by reducing the likelihood of breaching the misconduct, but ethical dilemmas cause illegal or immoral activities.
Between the years 2000 and 2002 there were over a dozen corporate scandals involving unethical corporate governance practices. The allegations ranged from faulty revenue reporting and falsifying financial records, to the shredding and destruction of financial documents (Patsuris, 2002). Most notably, are the cases involving Enron and Arthur Andersen. The allegations of the Enron scandal went public in October 2001. They included, hiding debt and boosting profits to the tune of more than one billion dollars. They were also accused of bribing foreign governments to win contacts and manipulating both the California and Texas power markets (Patsuris, 2002). Following these allegations, Arthur Andersen was investigated for, allegedly, shredding
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.
Organizational behavior is the study of the many factors that have an impact on how people and groups act, think, feel, and respond to work and organizations and how organizations respond to their environments. (George & Jones, 2005) Organizational behavior is particularly important to managers, who are responsible for supervising the activities of one of more employees.
I finally had to eat something light before my stomach ate itself, although I don’t know that I was fully hungry, or if I was just nervous, either way I ate a chopped up apple and yogurt with granola being very careful to not ruin my makeup. After eating a light breakfast the moment I had dreamed of as a child came, putting on my wedding dress. I had been waiting for that moment for such a long time, theres something magical about trying on your wedding dress the day of the wedding, it makes everything feel complete and whole. When I looked in the mirror looking back at me was a beautiful young woman that was full of excitement and happiness that made me get emotional, I had to force back tears for I didn’t want to look like a clown with makeup running down my face. By that time my aunts and uncles showed up to celebrate with the bride and make a toast. The pink champagne was so satisfying when it went down my throat, it felt cool and light that I could’ve easily had another glass, but I wanted to pace myself I still had a long day ahead of me. The photographers wanted to do pre ceremony pictures outdoors which was awful due