WorldCom: Organizational Culture and Unethical Safeguards Organizational culture is one of four influences whether an ethical or unethical behavior will be made. WorldCom’s demise, deliberately overstating their income by $7 billion between 1999 and 2002; and their once valued stock of $180 million becoming nearly worthless, can attribute a significant amount of their failure on their “dis”organizational culture. Corporations worldwide who do not think this type of fraud can happen at the hands of a relatively small amount of people, are completely wrong. Bernie Ebbers, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Financial Officer, Scott Sullivan’s classical view of social responsibility was the beginning of the end for WorldCom; this …show more content…
Ebbers’ belief that his only social responsibility was to maximize profits left him floundering, “Ebbers appeared to lack a strategic sense of direction and the company began drifting” (Kaplan & Kiron, 2007, p. 3).
Affects of Growth on Corporate Culture The rapid growth led to changes in people and culture. WorldCom’s finance department consolidated incompatible information of more than 60 acquired companies, “stitch[ing] it together like Frankenstein's monster from pieces of the many firms he acquired over the past two decades” (Lewis, 2002, para. 5). Not only did the finance department in Mississippi struggle, other departments that needed to communicate on a daily basis were not even in the same state. Headquarters of network operations were in Texas; human resources department was in Florida and the legal department was in Washington D.C. According to Kaplan and Kiron (2007), “each department had its own rules and management style. Nobody was on the same page. In fact, when I started in 1995, there were no written policies” (p. 3).
And things got worse: in 1999, when the fraud accounting records can be traced back to, Ebbers and Sullivan rewarded loyal employees particularly in the accounting and financial teams above the company’s approved salary and bonus guidelines. When complaints arose there was no independent avenue for questions; human resources rarely objected to special bonuses and the internal audit reported directly to Sullivan.
During the year 2000, Enron was exceeding all expectations, its stock was through the roof, and the company seemed to be on top of the world. The next year Enron declared bankruptcy. So how did a company rise and fall so quickly? The key in analysing this question lies in Enron’s organizational culture, which is defined as “a shared meaning held by members distinguishing an organization” (Robbins and Judge, Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 269). During its prime, Enron appeared to be a successful and innovative company, but in reality was a company rooted in an organizational culture of corruption and greed. The five culture dimensions of stability, risk taking and innovation, attention to detail, outcome orientation, and aggressiveness are key to understanding how unethical behavior became such a problem at Enron.
Ethics, ethical values, and social responsibility should all work in unison in a corporate business structure. These key traits are better defined as maintaining overall good business morals, obtaining employees who possess personal ethical values, and finally to behave ethically and with sensitivity toward social, cultural, economic and environmental issues. For a business to better ensure these quality business traits a code of ethics should be adopted by the business. In the cases of Bernie Madoff and Enron, the most well-known financial scandals in history, I feel, gave a major hand in pushing business all across America to have and enforce the code of ethics.
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
After Billy Weaver went missing the detectives started investigating. They found out where Billy was working and went and talked to Billy’s boss. Billy’s boss told the detective that Billy had come into town yesterday on a train and then went to a bed and breakfast. The detective asked what bed and breakfast.
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,
According to Johnson (2012) leaders are powerful role models, and policies will have a little effect if leaders do not follow the rules they set. In Enron case, corruption and ethical misconduct were deeply embedded in their business culture where profitability was more important than ethics. In this paper, I will address the factors that had led to the development of the culture of profit before principle at Enron. Also, I will create my personal code of ethics that will guide me in my professional and personal decision making and doing the right thing when faced with ethical challenges.
On March 15, 2005 former CEO of WorldCom, Bernard Ebbers sat in a federal courtroom waiting for the verdict. As the former CEO of WorldCom, Ebbers was accused of being personally responsible for the financial destruction of the communications giant. An internal investigation had uncovered $11 billion dollars in fraudulent accounting practices. Later a second report in 2003 found that during Ebber’s 2001 tenure as CEO, the company had over-reported earnings and understated expenses by an astonishing $74.5 billion dollars (Martin, 2005, para 3). This report included the mismanagement of funds, unethical lending practices among its top executives, and false bookkeeping which led to loss of tens of thousands of its employees.
In an industry overwhelmed with fraud and corruption, Martin Marietta was ready to revamp their reputation to become an ethical company. This concept catapulted a decade of creating, developing, and tweaking an ethics program. Martin Marietta's goal was to maintain a work place with "descent people doing quality work" (page 1). But with this idea came a series of difficult challenges the company needed to overcome. Martin Marietta arose to the challenge and executed an elaborate ethics program. The programs successes were hard to measure at best. A SWOT analysis was designed to reflect upon all aspects of the ethics program. A case study was used to discuss Martin Marietta's
The CFO Scott Sullivan forced his henchman, David Myers to see to it that accruals were released from various business units including UUNET. When Myers ordered the accrual release from UUNET’s CFO, David Schneeman, he met resistance. Myers got angry with Schneeman and ultimately found another person to complete the accrual release in order to appease Sullivan, who worked for Ebbers (Kaplan & Kiron, 2007). Bullying was another tactic of this company. Workplace bullies typically target independent employees who refuse to be subservient (Weidmer, 2011). For instance, when Cynthia Cooper, an internal auditor, was made aware of a questionable transfer, she brought it up at an audit committee meeting. After the meeting, Sullivan screamed at her and told her to stay away from that account (Kaplan & Kiron, 2007). Additionally, victims of workplace bullying may experience various symptoms such as weight loss and difficulty sleeping (Namie, 2003). This is exactly what happened to accounting manager Betty Vinson. Sullivan bullied Vinson into releasing accruals. Vinson was eager to maintain her status and did as requested, more than once. Vinson began to lose weight and sleep due to the bullying she experienced and the guilt she carried (Kaplan & Kiron, 2007).
An issue of distinguishing a fixed and a floating charge has considerable significance particularly for the parties involved in commercial relationships. It follows from the fact that under English law a fixed charge has a priority over a floating charge that means the former will prevail over the latter even though the company has granted a floating charge to the creditor prior to the creation of a fixed security. Another reason is that under the provisions of Insolvency Act 1986 holders of a floating charge are placed in a less favourable position than the holders of a fixed charge particularly due to sec. 176 of the Act which prevents the distribution of a certain portion of the company’s net property to the holder of a floating charge
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.
The stakeholders in this fraudulent case of WorldCom consist of Bernie Ebbers, Scott Sullivan, Buford Yates, David Myers, Cynthia Cooper, and Betty Vinson belong to the company. While the other stakeholders would consist of the creditors, Andersen (accounting firm), investors, and the public. This fraudulent act committed within WorldCom impacted every single stakeholder in a way. Either in a negative or positive way, most of the impact was caused with harm to everyone. The main individuals such as Ebbers, Sullivan, and Vinson all had major consequences as resulting with the fraud. Criminal trials were a major result with their fraudulent acts within WorldCom. Cooper was a lifesaver by most of the community. Aside from these individuals, the rest also got affected by the fraud. Investments conducted by the investors were all lost within the fraud process. The impact towards much of the image for Andersen was ruined. Many of the public lost their trust on the honesty and professionalism of Andersen and other certified public accounting firms. The entire employees from the top management to the smaller group of workers stayed unemployed and some with criminal punishment.
The collapse of Enron and all of the questions that arise to try and explain how this company failed, it all comes back to the values of management. The last option on our training plan will provide training in ethics. Enron executives and employees were caught in the desire to report ever-increasing earnings in order to keep stock prices rising, and to protect their jobs and wealth in their retirement plans (,2002).
With Enron, the responsibility and blame started with Enron’s executives, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow. Their goal was to make Enron into the world’s greatest company. To make this goal a reality, they created a company culture that encouraged “rule breaking” and went so far as to “discourage employees from reporting and investigating ethical lapses and questionable business dealings” (Knapp, 2010, p. 14). They insisted the employees use aggressive and illegal
Those same 25 executives announcing the layoffs had just one week earlier paid themselves "retention bonuses" of $55 million" (Diekmann, 2005). These employees did not show or use ethical business conduct by making sure they themselves received pay; they are just as guilty as the top executives involved with the accounting scandals.