Sherron Watkins—Revelations of a Letter Who Is Sherron Watkins? Sherron Watkins gained fame as the so-called “whistle-blower” in the Enron accounting scandal. “Enron hid billions of dollars in debts and operating losses inside private partnerships and dizzyingly complex accousnting schemes that were intended to pump up the buzz about the company and support its inflated stock price.” Watkins wrote two letters, one anonymously, to Enron’s chairman, Kenneth Lay. In those letters she “exposed top
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Law Review Stiles, P. and Taylor, B. (1993) ‘Maxwell-The failure of corporate governance’, Corporate governance-an international review, 1(1), pp. 314-327 Boyd, C.: 1996, ‘Ethics and corporate governance: The issues raised by the Cadbury report in the United Kingdom,’ Journal of business Ethics 15(2), 167-183 Parkinson, J. and Kelly, G. (1999) the combined code on corporate governance, Political Quarterly, 70, 1, 101-7 Lutz, S., Eberle, D. and Lautter, D. (2011) ‘Varieties of private self-regulation
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corporations are one of the most recognizable business structures today as their span is wide spread and various corporations are in the news at any given point in time. Essentially they have a separate identity from the owners of the company and there may be many owners who participate as shareholders of a corporation. From the very name, a sole proprietorship is a business in which there is a single owner who is solely responsible for making business decisions and a partnership consists of two or
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Overall, it is found that ethical leadership is complex and a relatively newer field of study. Yet, common themes include the need for establishing trust and gaining ethical knowledge by way of study and application. Also, major organizational failures, such as Enron, have ignited an interest within the field. Possible further research is recommended at the end of this review. T his article examines the literature regarding the topic of ethical leadership within organizations. The literature review
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Journal of Business Ethics (2008) 77:431–449 DOI 10.1007/s10551-007-9358-8 Ó Springer 2007 The Dark Side of Authority: Antecedents, Mechanisms, and Outcomes of Organizational Corruption Ruth V. Aguilera Abhijeet K. Vadera ABSTRACT. Corruption poisons corporations in America and around the world, and has devastating consequences for the entire social fabric. In this article, we focus on organizational corruption, described as the abuse of authority for personal benefit, and draw on Weber’s
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Corporate governance heavily refers to the whole structure of rights, processes and controls established internally and externally over the management of a business entity with the objective of protecting the interests of its stakeholders from any type of loses incurring. To begin with, firstly there are three types of auditors in the corporate governances, internal, external and government auditors. The role of the internal auditors in the corporate governance is to evaluates corporate activities
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Nicholas Barton 00343164 Accounting 2600 Case Study: The Enron Collapse “Why was it that Enron, a financial services company, in effect, could not release a balance sheet with their earnings statement?” -Jim Chanos, President Kynikos Associates. In the film “Enron: The Smartest Guys in The Room,” analyst Jim Chanos asks why, the 7th largest company in the world at the time, could not supply investors with basic financial statements. These statements as we learn in accounting are the fundamental
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the way they manage all their relationships with shareholders, employees, and the communities they live and work in. Enron went bankrupt and disappeared over 10 years ago but the impact it has made on ethical standards have never faded. Thousands of people lost their retirement savings, and the energy industry was greatly affected by the downfall of Enron. The collapse of Enron is now used in many textbooks and research papers as an example of the importance of an organization’s behaviors an how
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There are as many opinions on business and ethics as there are statements. In this paper we present the major positions in this ongoing and increasing debate and categorize them according to their ratio as business or ethics, business and ethics and finally ethics in business. In this paper we also present the view, that ethical issues are not separated but connected from business in terms of making profit. We also argue against a strong normative idea of business ethics claiming social responsibility
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To fully understand how the business culture has acquired the greed mindset, a look at what a corporation is and defining corporate behavior becomes the starting point. First a corporation is defined as “an association of individuals, created by law and having an existence apart from that of its members as well as distinct and inherent powers and liabilities (Webster Dictionary).” Although made up of people, being separate or apart from its members also equals unaccountability. The question of “who
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