Post Enron Era

There was an obvious and dangerous amount of corruption that allowed big business to control the federal government.

This now bankrupt company, misappropriated investments, pension funds, stock options and saving plans after deregulation and little oversight by the federal government. However, with deregulation an increasing competitive culture emerged as the CEO Jeffry Skilling motto to his organization was to “do it right, do it now, and do it better” this was the rally cried that pushed ambitious employees to engage in unethical behavior as Enron use deceptive “accounting methods to maintain its investment grade status” (Sims, & Brinkmann, 2003, pp.244-245). As Enron continued to flourish and received accolades from the business community this recognition drove executives to continue the façade of bending ethical guidelines before their public fall from

Enron boosted profits and hid debts, manipulated CA and TX energy, using off the books partnerships, and pay foreign government to win contract

In 1987, the misappropriation of money by two traders of Enron Oil brought to light the Valhalla scandal. These traders created offshore accounts and phony books, thus betting on the price of oil for Enron on both sides. Despite the executive board’s attempt to bring this case to Lay’s attention, no action was taken against these traders. On the contrary, they were encouraged to keep making money. The traders bet all of Enron’s money

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 – its official name being “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002” – is

I feel that you are on the right path to getting an idea of the conflict that may be represented in the articel. Reading the Beaudoin article and making reference to the Bernie Madoff, does show the ethical issues involved. In addition to low morals, there are other policies that have been broken and a loss of control when it comes to transparency.

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

.Some indispensable issues that have been gone up against are conflicts of interest, financial integrity, corruption and bribery, consumer privacy, and ethical advertising. In the event that the administration authorized more grounded approaches to keep organizations in agreeability, then outrages like Enron would not happen.. Consider those delegates impacted by losing all their retirement that they trusted into putting in their association

2Arguments for why auditors should not be allowed to perform these services for the same client include:

This deception on behalf of the executives and others in the organization who hid this vastly affected anyone who had stock in Enron as well as stock in other energy corporations. The

It seems like business morals and ethics are being whisked to the side in lieu of the ever growing demand of higher stock prices, rising budget goals and investor profits. Despite the increased regulation of corporations through legislation, such as, Sarbanes-Oxley, some corporations still find themselves struggling to maintain ethics and codes of conduct within the workplace. In reviewing the failings of the Enron Scandal, one can heed the mistakes that both individual and organization malaise, such as, conflicts of interest, lack of true transparency and the sever lack of moral courage from the government, executive board, senior management and others, contributed to the energy giant’s downfall.

Internal auditors cannot effectively provide an analysis on the company’s internal dealings as they are part of the company. External auditors, however, can observe these processes from the outside and then determine where the funds of the company and whether the dealings adhere to the regulations. Using external auditors in a company prevents conflict of interest from happening. Conflict of interest is a situation where an individual or organization has multiple interests and of those multiple interests, one could possible corrupt the motivation for an act on the other when the auditor has any kind of beneficial interest in their client’s performance. In other circumstances, there is also the threat of familiarity where auditors become

Enron's entire scandal was based on a foundation of lies characterized by the most brazen and most unethical accounting and business practices that will forever have a place in the hall of scandals that have shamed American history. To the outside, Enron looked like a well run, innovative company. This was largely a result of self-created businesses or ventures that were made "off the balance sheet." These side businesses would sell stock, reporting profits, but not reporting losses. "Treating these businesses "off the balance sheet" meant that Enron pretended that these businesses were autonomous, separate firms. But, if the new business made money, Enron would report it as income. If the new business lost money or borrowed money, the losses and debt were not reported by Enron" (mgmtguru.com). As the Management Guru website explains, these tactics were alls designed to make Enron look like a more profitable company and to give it a higher stock price.

A company prepares financial statement to provide information about its financial position and performance. This information is in turn used by a wide range of stakeholders (such as investors, banks, customers, suppliers etc) in making economic decisions with respect to respective economic interest in the company. Typically, in terms of ownership by investment in shares of the company, shareholders though own the company but do not manage it. Therefore, the shareholder and other such stakeholders to get comfort in taking sound decision need independent assurance from the auditors that the financial statements reflect true and fair view of the company affairs in all material respects. Hence, in order to enhance the level of

ensure accountability, he had to watch out for any evidence of issues that had been