Management and Organizational Structure

How Enron’s bankruptcy was contributed by is corporate culture As with much of Enron, their outward appearance did not match what was really going on inside the company. Enron ended up cultivating their own demise for bankruptcy by how they ran their company. This corrupt corporate culture was a place whose employees threw ethical responsibility to the wind if it meant financial gain. At Enron, the employees were motivated by a very “cut-throat” culture. If an employee didn’t perform well enough, they would simply be replaced by someone who could. “The company’s culture had profound effects on the ethics of its employees” (Sims, pg.243). Like a parent to their children, when the executives of a company pursue unethical financial means, it sets a certain tone for their employees and even the market of the company. As mentioned before, Enron had a very “cut-throat” attitude in regards to their employees. This also became one Enron’s main ethical falling points. According to the class text, “employees were rated every six months, with those ranked in the bottom 20 percent forced to leave” (Ferrell, 2017, pg. 287). This system which pits employees against each other rather than having them work together will create a workplace of dishonesty and a recipe of disaster for the company. This coupled with the objective of financial growth, creates a very dim opportunity for any ethical culture. “The entire cultural framework of Enron not only allowed unethical behavior to flourish,

Before going into an analysis on the organizational culture at Enron, I will first elaborate on the severity of the unethical behavior that existed at Enron. The problem can best be shown in the words of an Enron employee who said “If I’m going to my boss’s office to talk about compensation, and if I step on some guy’s throat and that doubles it, then I’ll stomp on that guy’s throat”(Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). This culture of greed and corruption can also be seen through Enron’s mark to market accounting system, in which Enron cashed in on ideas and “future profits” without actually making anything. Furthermore,

During this program, the author’s perspective evolved as a result of the author being discovered that the end-result of Enron failure was motivated ethically, the company itself was unsound ethically in the mere beginning. Some may question how could this be; however, from the readings on the organization, Enron was unethical from the start.

The story of Enron is truly remarkable. As a company it merely controlled the electricity, natural gas and communications sectors of the world. It reported (key word, reported) revenues over one hundred billion US dollars and was presented America’s Most Innovative Company by Fortune magazine for six sequential years. But, with power comes greed and Enron from its inception employed people who set their eyes upon money, prestige, power or a combination of the three. The gluttony took over sectors which the company could not operate proficiently nor successfully.

WorldCom, for example, was facing a downward trend in their industry. The telecommunications company was going south, especially thanks to text messaging and the internet. In addition, the government denied them the ability to merge with Sprint (a $129 billion dollar merger), which quickly halted their growth. WorldCom had built a growth strategy built upon mergers and acquisitions, instead of growing product lines and larger marketing campaigns. So when the federal government denied their ability to grow large enough to discourage competition, they had to look elsewhere to increase shareholder profitability. Another venue of motivation was of course based upon the Fraud Triangle. This diagram or model consists of three things for one to commit fraud: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. WorldCom had all three things – leading them straight towards disaster. The CFO was facing immense pressure from stakeholders and the executive board to increase profits (and growth), he had the opportunity as he controlled the books, and he either had justification or, more probably, a lack of ethics. Applying this triangle to Enron, all three factors were present. Enron was facing immense pressure to continue their standing as one of the top 10 fortune 500 companies, as well as continuing to be named one of the world’s most

Enron was facing risks, risks from every angle. You can see from the history to the demise of the company everything was based on risk. Even when it came to the personal lives of those in charge, you can find some type of risk. Being a Houston native, I did not quite understand the reaction to Enron. I did not understand why it went so far as to changing the name of a stadium from Enron to Minute Maid Park. I was only a teen at the time, but now I am not. I now hope to explain my opinion on how the past, the executive’s and outliers were red flags prior to the Enron crisis. My thoughts on how they could have handled the matter. Lastly, express what I would have done if I was an executive or general council to such a company.

Enron’s ride is quite a phenomenon: from a regional gas pipeline trader to the largest energy trader in the world, and then back down the hill into bankruptcy and disgrace. As a matter of fact, it took Enron 16 years to go from about $10 billion of assets to $65 billion of assets, and 24 days to go bankruptcy. Enron is also one of the most celebrated business ethics cases in the century. There are so many things that went wrong within the organization, from all personal (prescriptive and psychological approaches), managerial (group norms, reward system, etc.), and organizational (world-class culture) perspectives. This paper will focus on the business ethics issues at Enron that were raised from the documentation Enron: The Smartest Guys

Enron was once one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, pulp, paper and communications companies. However, in December 2, 2001, Enron suddenly filed for bankruptcy. During the ten years before Enron¡¦s went bankrupt, Enron¡¦s management had started transferring Enron¡¦s funding to personal accounts and made fake balance sheets, which provided investors information about how this company goes. (Gibney, 2005) These illegal actions, performed by certain individuals, finally led Enron to go bankrupt. These people¡¦s unethical behaviors such as CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of Enron, auditors and journalists caused Enron to go bankrupt, and therefore are responsible for Enron¡¦s bankruptcy.

Enron Corporation: Ethics Case Study and Personal Reflection Capitalism is an amoral system that follows protocol of mechanical laws of supply and demand. Over the course of two centuries our country has tried to introduce ethics and morality into economic constructs. Anti-trust, labor laws, and regulation have been our attempts to introduce an ethical element into an otherwise unfeeling system of exchange. The reason, an attempt to reduce damage that is possible by the manipulation of capitalism. And to not only to create an even playing field but keeping the field from reverting back to being occupied by serfs. Corporations offer many benefits to society, increased supply of goods, tax revenue, jobs…etc. They can also cause damage as in the case of Enron Corporation.

If the most troubling aspect of Enron was the way in which its employees were treated losing jobs, stocks, health and retirement benefits in the wake of its dissolution, then it is possible to backtrack from this event to list the many problems provided by the men that ran the company that allowed for such a travesty to happen. The duplicitous, and in some cases outright iniquitous business practices of this

Introduction 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.”

While completing the readings for the week titled “Experiments in Organizational Structure” I noticed two themes, self-managed teams and organizational culture. There was a clear divide of organizational culture between the companies such as Moosewood Collective and Zappos versus Amazon and Enron. The readings for the week were well-rounded and demonstrated that each culture had positive and negatives. However, research can enhance what organizational culture has been found to be the best culture in creating successful companies, which is not expanded on in the readings. Additionally, some of the readings focused on companies that had no hierarchy and how the lack of hierarchy allows for leaders to emerge. This idea relates to the literature on leadership in self-managed teams and how that may or may not be beneficial for a company. Therefore, this issue paper will critique the organizational structural practices that the companies in the assigned readings have been using. Additionally, this issue paper will add more insight into what has been found in research that can support or add improvements to the organizational decisions the companies in the assigned readings have made.

(Enron Ethics, 2010). In this case of Enron the corporate culture played a vital role of its collapse. It was culture of full of moneymaking strategies and greed, in the firm Greed was good and money was God. There was no or very little regards for ethics or the law, they operated as there was no law and ethics in the world (Enron Ethics, 2010). Such culture affected all the employees of the firm from top to down. Organizational culture supported unethical behaviour and practises, corruption, cheating and those were all widespread. Many executives and managers knew that the firm is following illegal and unethical practises, but the executives and the board of directors did not knew how to change this unethical culture, the firm used creative accounting and were making showing misleading profits every day. Reputation management enabled them carry on their illegal and unethical operations. Moreover if the company made huge Revenue in the unethical way then the new individual who joined the firm would also have to practise all those unethical practises to survive in the company. All of the management was filled by greed and ambition, their decisions became seriously imperfect, thus the firm fell back and managers had to pay in the price in the form imprisonment and fines. Greed is the main key factors that brought the Enron “the most innovative company” to downfall. Enron was looking into the ways of

Enron managed the business did not obey the law. Enron made some criminal cases in finance and business to get the high profit and hide the debt. Some of the executives of Enron deceived the investors to buy the stock of Enron because the stock price will rise. Enron also made fake financial reports to cheat the shareholders, analysts and customers. Enron is dishonest to do the business. Kenneth Lay failed to do his duty as the chairman of Enron to manage his subordinates to let them destroyed the operation of

Baasit Kazi Ms. Bogert College Accounting 1-1B 28 April, 2015 Accounting Scandals Reflection Enron was founded in July of 1985. Enron was an electricity and natural gas company which was a fortune 500 company and it was ranked the sixth largest energy company in the world. Enron’s stock went from a peak of $90.75 to $0.67. This was very detrimental to stockholders. Enron’s top executives sold their stock a long time before the stock price fell. A lot of lower level employees could not sell their stock because of deals they made with the company. This later caused a lot of these employees to lose their life savings and everything they had worked for. Enron used a very complex accounting method to trick the stock market. This method was called “mark to market” accounting. Enron used this method of accounting to predict and project their earnings in a long term period. These earnings were projected based on the long term energy contracts Enron was going to make. This could have been money that was not made at that point. This made Enron’s stock price skyrocket at a very fast pace, making a lot of employees and general public invest in the stock. Enron stock seemed to be a very secure and profitable investment which would make people lots of money. The Fortune 500 company went down very quickly. In August of 2001, the CEO of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling resigned. He randomly resigned and a lot of suspicions arose. His resignation was described to be because of personal reasons.