...Enron Case Study Seven years after the fact, the story of the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the Enron Corporation continues to capture the imagination of the general public. What really happened with Enron? Outside of those associated with the corporate world, either through business or education, relatively few people seem to have a complete sense of the myriad people, places, and events making up the sixteen years of Enron’s existence as an American energy company. Some argue Enron’s record-breaking bankruptcy and eventual demise was the result of a lack of ethical corporate behavior attributed, more generally, to capitalism’s inability to check the unmitigated growth of corporate greed. Others believe Enron’s collapse can be traced back to questionable accounting practices such as mark-to-market accounting and the utilization of Special Purpose Entities (SPE’s) to hide financial debt. In other instances, people point toward Enron’s mismanagement of risk and overextension of capital resources, coupled with the stark philosophical differences in management that existed between company leaders, as the primary reasons why the company went bankrupt. Yet, despite these various analyses of why things went wrong, the story of Enron’s rise and fall continues to mystify the general public as well as generate continued interest in what actually happened. The broad purpose of this paper is to investigate the Enron scandal from variety perspectives. The paper begins with a narrative...
Words: 5799 - Pages: 24
...Sam Pat Business Plan Argosy University, Washington DC TO: Dr. Mike Fox , 7897XB Course Facilitor FROM: Sam Pat Date: March 24, 2012 Subject: Business Plan for Enron Corporation The purpose of the business plan is to discuss and identify organizational cultural problems which exist in Enron Corporation. The researcher will provide a solution by defining the ideal principles of organizational culture. Also, the researcher will provide an action plan that will transform Enron Corporation into a learning organization. Finally, the researcher will discuss the rationale for selecting and recommending the ideal principles of organizational culture. Enron’s Problems Managers and senior leadership ignored established policies and process for personal gain. Employees were encouraged by leadership to engage in unethical behavior and business practice. Enron’s employees violated local, federal, and states regulatory policies and laws. Enron’s leaders threat to fire employees who did not want to go along with the existing states of affairs. Employees were harassed and discriminated against. The company did not use the checks and balance system that was in place. Employees did not receive any diversity or career development training (Stein, 2007; Werther, 2003). Management excluded employees from the decision-making process and once the new process or business practice was decided on employees did not receive the full scope of information necessary to carry out...
Words: 1263 - Pages: 6
...Why Enron Failed By Suzy Bills In 2001, Americans were appalled to learn of the unethical practices carried out by leaders and other employees of Enron (as well as its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen). Enron used various methods of deception to appear more profitable than it really was, including through creating off-the-book entities to which Enron transferred its substantial debt (Jennings, 2005). While the company’s stock rose, so did its debt, and company leadership began using insider information and trading millions of dollars in company stock. When the scandal and impending bankruptcy were revealed, the company’s stock decreased from $90 to less than $1, a devastating hit to the financial market and numerous investors and employees (Betz, 2002). While the public was shocked at the numerous unethical financial practices, several organizational behavior theories, when applied to Enron, explain how such unethical activity could be permitted to take place. Chima (2005) describes organizational behavior as the result of the decisions of those who have obtained decision-making power, with the decisions reflecting the decision makers’ assessment of what is economically and politically beneficial for themselves and the company. Enron’s executives allowed themselves to be motivated much more by what would benefit themselves than what would truly benefit the company. The political model of organizational behavior describes this focus on self-interest (Chima, 2005). Money, greed...
Words: 1299 - Pages: 6
...Financial Statement Insurance This is a proposal to increase the effectiveness of corporate governance in the post-Enron era through the implementation of financial statement insurance. This paper gives a brief history of the purpose of financial statements as well as the importance of external auditing of financial statements. It gives examples of the corporate governance failures of companies like Enron and WorldCom. It covers how and why these failures happened and reviews the grave consequences of the failures. It also takes a brief look at the laws that have been passed to prevent future failures, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley act of 2002. It shows how the new laws have been helpful but have not solved the problem. Finally, it shows how the implementation of financial statement insurance will greatly improve the accuracy of external auditing of a company’s financial statements. Purpose of financial statements The purpose of financial statements is to give an overall picture of the health and profitability of the business. This overall picture of the business provides information on a company’s financial position and performance. Financial statements are also necessary to show changes in a company’s financial position. Financial statements are used internally by managers, shareholders and employees to make good business and investment decisions. They are used externally by prospective investors, financial institutions, suppliers, customers, competitors, and governments...
Words: 2501 - Pages: 11
...White collar crime The phrase white collar crime was first used by Edwin Sutherland in 1939 during a speech to the American Sociological Society. He defined white collar crime as a "crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation."(Sutherland, “White-Collar Criminality."). Today, white collar crime refers to illegal offenses that are generally committed in the business or professional setting (white collar versus blue collar jobs) to achieve financial gain. Crimes that do not involve physical violence, and that relate largely to financial matters, are often called white collar crimes. Corporate corruption is out of control for two main reasons. First, big companies are now multinational, while governments remain national. Big companies are so financially powerful that governments are afraid to take them on. It is very important to study the cause and the possible solution for the increase in numbers of white collar crime; our focus needs to shift from Blue Collar Crimes to White Collar Crimes. U.S.A spends nearly $50 billion on fighting Blue Collar Crimes, not even quarter of that amount is spent on fighting White Collar Crimes. Hardly a day passes without a new story of malfeasance. Every Wall Street firm has paid significant fines during the past decade for phony accounting, insider trading, securities fraud, Ponzi schemes, or outright embezzlement by CEOs. A massive insider-trading ring is currently on trial in New York...
Words: 2916 - Pages: 12
...The Fall of Enron Abstract This research paper talks about the Enron case – how it rose to the level of one of the top companies in the world and then fell from grace so that it eventually had to file for bankruptcy. The paper will discuss the financial and accounting manipulations that Enron resorted to and the analysts approach towards its stock prices and will discuss its eventual fate. The study will revolve around how Enron shed its ethics in an attempt to report ever increasing income and keep its stock prices high and how despite its short-lived surge of growth, it is still, even 11 years after a bankrupt, struggling to stand on its feet. The role of Enron’s top management and its auditors is elaborated upon, as is the detail of the tools they resorted to in order to hide debts and inflate profits. Enron was clearly a case of fraud where investors were cheated as the company management portrayed a rosy picture of a developing and expanding business while in reality the company’s expansion was going nowhere and most of its new businesses were unsuccessful. In an attempt to grow fast, Enron lost its roots and while trying to master itself in several different fields, forgot the basics of business. The Fall of Enron Introduction The fictional superhero Spiderman once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” This balance between power and responsibility exists not just in our personal life, but also in business. Peter Drucker stated that “There is...
Words: 4627 - Pages: 19
...Ethical risks and threats in the accounting profession Accounting ethics is primarily the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to accountancy. Accounting ethics were first introduced by Luca Pacioli in 1494 in his book “Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni, et proportinalita”, and later expanded by government bodies, professional organizations and independent companies (Humphrey 2005). Throughout 2001 and 2002, the financial scandals in in the USA and some other countries, such as Australia, dramatically demonstrated how the efficiency of financial markets is based on assumptions of trust and ethical behavior of corporate managers (McPhail 2001). The collapse of companies such as Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing in the USA, HIH Insurance and OneTel in Australia, and Parmalat in Italy, has led to a loss of confidence by the investing public in the system of financial reporting and accountability. The globalization and diversification of accounting services, combined with market competition and high profile corporate collapses has drawn attention to the accounting profession and its perceived ethical standards. (Cooper 2007) Ethical values provide the foundation on which a civilized society exists. Without the foundation, civilization collapses. On a personal level, the answer to the question of the highest aspiration might be wealth, fame, knowledge, popularity, or integrity. But if integrity is secondary to any of the alternatives, it will be sacrificed...
Words: 2284 - Pages: 10
...A History of Enron Enron is an energy company based in Houston, Texas that deals with the energy trade on an international and domestic basis. It was formed in 1985 when Houston Natural Gas merged with InterNorth. After several years of international and domestic expansion involving complicated deals and contracts, Enron was billions of dollars into debt. All of this debt was concealed from shareholders through partnerships with other companies, fraudulent accounting, and illegal loans. Enron was created by a merge between Houston Natural Gas and Internorth. Houston's Natural Gas's CEO Kenneth Lay headed the merger of the two companies. Kenneth Lay became the CEO of Enron. Enron was originally solely involved with the distribution and transmission of electricity and gas in the United States. In the merger, Enron incurred a large amount of debt, and as a result of deregulation, no longer had exclusive rights to its pipelines. The company had to find a way to generate profits and cash flow. Kenneth Lay hired Jeffrey Skilling to work for Enron as an accountant. Skilling suggested the practice of buying gas from a network of suppliers and selling it to consumers at a fixed price with a contract. Enron was interested in the expansion, building, and operation of pipelines, power plants, and other infrastructure worldwide. After just a year of operation Enron merged with a company called Spectrum Seven, a company whose chairman and CEO is the former president of the United States...
Words: 3482 - Pages: 14
...ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURES POISON COMPANIES THE RISE AND FALL OF ENRON, WORLDCOM, HEALTHSOUTH, AND TYCO INTERNATIONAL David R. Lease, Norwich University Abstract This paper presents an analytical and comparative study of four recent corporate scandals involving organizations that had previously been recognized as both ethically and organizationally sound. Based on these case studies, the following issues are discussed: (1) The role of leader behavior and organizational/leadership styles in shaping the corporate organizational culture of an organization, and (2) The extent to which this culture renders the organization and its members (including the top executives) prone to ethical misbehavior. The four companies selected for this case analysis are: Enron Corporation, WorldCom, Inc., Tyco International, Ltd., and HealthSouth Corporation. Each case is considered individually. The basic elements in the scandal are outlined and the principal aspects of each organization’s corporate culture discussed, with special emphasis on the influence of leadership styles and leadership behavior/practices on organizational culture. The four cases are then compared and contrasted in the light of the existing evidence on the relation between corporate culture and ethical misbehavior. PRELUDE “We were doing something special. Magical. It wasn’t a job – it was a mission. We were changing the world. We were doing God’s work.” – Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron COO, President and CEO in the immediate aftermath of...
Words: 15928 - Pages: 64
...The nature of thought is intriguing, in that our thoughts make up who we are as a person. Today’s society throws around the word integrity loosely these days. This paper will explain identifying situations that might lead to unethical practices and behavior in accounting. I will also share what I learned about the effect of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on financial statements. Examples of unethical behaviors involved injured parties, how the unethical behavior affected the organization, individual and society, and how the unethical behavior could be avoided will be discussed. Situations That May Lead to Unethical Practices There will be someone who will ask the person doing the books in business to ignore or change something in the books, when a person is in the accounting or finance field long enough. Choices like this are measured to be unethical practices and behavior. The practice of changing the books for whatever the reason is just one of many different ways that this can happen. The broad-spectrum of unethical occurs when employers do not obey the rules of their professions approved standards. Amazingly at times, though unethical it may not necessarily mean that it will be illegal. The people doing things right find this very frustrating in their industries. A popular example of an unethical practice may be a person whom manipulates businesses finance, or has different ways of controlling the net income to either make the business look better, or for their own personal...
Words: 891 - Pages: 4
...The Rise and Collapse of Enron: Financial Innovation, Errors and Lessons Elisa S. Moncarz* Raúl Moncarz* Alejandra Cabello** Benjamin Moncarz*** Abstract Recent collapses of high profile business failures like Enron, Worldcom, Parmlat, and Tyco has been a subject of great debate among regulators, investors, government and academics in the recent past. Enron’s case was the greatest failure in the history of American capitalism and had a major impact on financial markets by causing significant losses to investors. Enron was a company ranked by Fortune as the most innovative company in the United States; it exemplified the transition from the production to the knowledge economy. Many lessons can we learn from its collapse. In this paper we present an analysis of the factors that contributed to Enron’s rise and failure, underlying the role that energy deregulation and manipulation of financial statements played on Enron’s demise. We summarize some lessons that can be learned in order to prevent another Enron and restore confidence in the financial markets, as well as in the accounting and auditing professions. Keywords: Enron, Corporate Ethics, Corporate Bankruptcy, Creative Accounting. Introduction T he rise and fall of high profile businesses like Enron, WorldCom, Parmlat and Tyco has been a subject of great debate and research among regulators, investors, government and academics in the recent years. Enron, for one, was the greatest failure *Professor-investigator...
Words: 7654 - Pages: 31
...Chapter Four Professional Accounting in the Public Interest, Post-Enron Purpose of the Chapter When the Enron, Arthur Andersen, and WorldCom debacles triggered the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), a new era of stakeholder expectations was crystallized for the business world and particularly for the professional accountants that serve in it. The drift away from the professional accountant’s role as a fiduciary to that of a businessperson was called into question and reversed. The principles that the new expectations spawned and renewed resulted in changes in how the professional accountants are to behave, what services are to be offered, and what performance standards are to be met. These standards have been embedded in a new governance structure and in guidance mechanisms, which have domestic and international components. The influence of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) will be as important as that of SOX in the long run. This chapter examines each of these developments and provides insights into important areas of current and future practice. Building upon the understanding of the new stakeholder accountability framework facing clients and employers developed in earlier chapters, this chapter explores public expectations for the role of the professional accountant and the principles that should be observed in discharging that role. This leads to consideration of the implications for services to be...
Words: 62999 - Pages: 252
.... Burton Final Paper: The Enron Scandal MSA 602 Dr. Pendarvis 12-4-2011 Abstract Enron's collapse is generally viewed as a morality tale - the natural result of managerial greed, a clueless board, and feckless gatekeepers. But none of these aspects of the story clearly distinguishes Enron from other major firms during the bubble era of the late 90s. This material identifies certain economic facts from the many moving parts that was Enron, and organizes them along two main threads. The first describes Enron's major businesses, and the incentives and constraints under which the managers of those businesses operated. The second thread describes the basic financial engineering tools developed by Enron's finance department. These threads are then woven into the timeline of Enron's ultimate collapse. What emerges is a tale of how bad bets that resulted in good outcomes came to be viewed by top management and the board as bets worth repeating on an ever-larger scale. Early success in highly risky ventures were ramped up and duplicated, under perverse incentives, into a financial disaster. The firm then doubled down on that disaster with non-economic hedges developed by the finance group. The CFO, in a wholesale breach of his fiduciary responsibilities, including corruption of various gatekeepers, managed to cloak the poor quality of his hedges and his motivation in creating them. This duplicity prevented...
Words: 3025 - Pages: 13
...Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski, Carole Lager, Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin Enron and World Finance Also by Observatoire de la Finance From Bretton Woods to Basel Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 21, Spring 2005 Ethics of Taxation and Banking Secrecy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 12, Autumn 2002 Will the Euro Shape Europe? Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 9, Winter 2001–2 Dommen, E. (ed.) Debt Beyond Contract Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 2, 2001 Bonvin, J.-M. Debt and the Jubilee: Pacing the Economy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 1, 1999 Dembinski, P. H. (leading contributor) Economic and Financial Globalization: What the Numbers Say United Nations, Geneva, 2003 Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski Carole Lager Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin in association with the Observatoire de la Finance Selection, editorial matter and Chapters 1, 2 and 16 © Observatoire de la Finance Remaining chapters © contributors 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence ...
Words: 118357 - Pages: 474
...Unethical Behavior and its Costs 4 August 2013 Unethical Behavior and its Cost 1 The Fall of Dennis Kozlowski Many leaders work hard and strive diligently to lead companies to success and wealth in an ethical manner. In doing so, the reputation of the company is enhanced as are the benefits to the shareholders and the public. That notwithstanding, some leaders have been identified with exhibiting poor judgement and gross unethical behavior (Stephens, Vance, Pettegrew, 2012). The underlying reasons for these failures on the part of individual leaders can be traced back to a lack of moral and ethical standards. The downfall of former Tyco International CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, is just one of many examples. Background Kozlowski reputedly came from a middle-class background. His parents were public service employees and sent their son to Seton Hall University, a Catholic school. Kozlowski graduated from Seton Hall University in 1968 and gained employment in auditing. Later, in 1975, Kozlowski gained a position with Tyco and had a phenomenal rise in the company. In 1989, his was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer and three years later, he was promoted to Chief Executive Officer, only 17 years after joining Tyco. Somewhere along the way, the good Catholic education and standards provided by his second-generation Polish-American parents went astray (biography). Undoubtedly Kozlowski excelled in his executive position raising Tyco's mergers...
Words: 1774 - Pages: 8
