Enron Ethics Case Sample Essay

Enron Corporation. one time the 7th largest company in US and a planetary leader of electricity and natural gas industries. filed for bankruptcy protection in late 2001. It was revealed that the company had been concealing investing losingss and created fabricated gross through several complicated accounting catchs. Besides Enron’s senior direction who created the whole debacle. many people believed that several other parties. such as the Board of Directors and the external hearers should besides portion the incrimination. The public began to oppugn the unity of US corporations. particularly environing the fiducial responsibilities of Boards of Directors. struggles of involvement between the function of hearer and the consultative unit. every bit good as moral criterions of concern direction.

At that clip it was the largest bankruptcy in history. The imperium that Enron built over several decennaries was destroyed within mere hebdomads when the dirts were made public. This finally led to the decomposition of the Arthur Andersen and the passage of the celebrated Sarbanes-Oxley Act that aimed at heightening coverage and internal administration criterion of public companies.

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Ethical motives Issues
The first issue is the deficiency of independency of the board of managers and their breach of fiducial responsibility. The Board of Directors has the legal and ethical responsibility of supervising the company’s direction on behalf of the stockholders. The members should stay independent and should ever analyze the company’s operations with great attention. In Enron’s instance. the Board of Directors was comprised of members who were excessively close to the senior direction to move objectively. Many of them besides served on the board for over 20 old ages. They were much less likely to be indifferent and to oppugn the company’s concern theoretical account. In add-on. the board members received twice the national mean compensation and had small incentive to kick about current operations. Despite having a immense compensation. the board members ignored many ruddy flags and did hardly the lower limit to carry through their fiducial responsibilities. They relied entirely on the information provided by a few members of senior direction and failed to detect the terrible dislocation of communicating channels among cardinal stakeholders such as the hearers and internal employees other than the CEOs and CFO.

The senior direction was besides guilty of tolerance and encouragement of hazardous and foolhardy concern patterns. profiting personally from fabricated accounting Numberss and non moving in the company’s best involvements. Former CEOs Kenneth Lay and Jeffery Skilling and CFO Andrew Fastow were the cardinal people in the whole Enron fiasco. They built a civilization that rewarded irresponsible risk-taking behavior. They purposefully ignored warnings about debatable accounting patterns and hid information from the populace every bit good as the Board of Directors. Most significantly. to the choler of the populace. each of them received 1000000s of dollars from all of the questionable minutess that finally destroyed one million millions of dollars in company value.

Finally. accounting house Arthur Andersen and several major Bankss were guilty of struggles of involvement and wittingly helping Enron’s deceitful patterns. The accounting catchs that Enron used are highly complicated and they could non hold been achieved without the engagement of the hearer and major Bankss. As Enron’s external hearer. Arthur Andersen was supposed to guarantee the quality of Enron’s finance studies but it failed to carry through this responsibility. The ground that the scrutinizing squad remained silent was the struggle of involvement between its hearers and the adviser function. Enron was. at that clip. besides AA’s major consulting/ concern consultative client. AA collected an tremendous sum of confer withing fees from Enron every twelvemonth and they would non desire to put on the line losing this gross watercourse. Similarly. Bankss such as Merrill Lynch and Citigroup generated immense net incomes from the Enron history every twelvemonth and had every inducement to collaborate with the Enron direction.

Personal Appraisal
After the Enron dirt. the populace was outraged and blamed everyone who was related. including all Enron and Arthur Andersen employees. Since so cipher would desire to be associated with these two companies. In my sentiment. merely the top functionaries should be held responsible. In category pupils were asked if they would decline to be corrupted under similar fortunes and most of us agreed that it would be a hard determination to do. It is a tough determination non merely because of the immense sum of money involved. but besides because of equal force per unit area. In Enron. the dominant office civilization was to be aggressive and gain as much money as possible.

Top performing artists were saluted while bottom strugglers were asked to go forth. Finally some employees began to do hazardous determinations that were non in the company’s best involvement in hope of remaining in front of others and finally most employees followed. When most employees are involved in some kind of unethical behavior. declining to be corrupted would merely ensue in one of two effects: either you resigned or became the bottom 15 % and were fired. If you were non one of the top functionaries. your occupation was on the line and it was non a simple pick of whether you wanted to be ethical or non. This is really common in many companies. where merely the employees that generate the most net income have the say on company way and ethical criterion. Not every one of them will turn into Enron but it should be a concern for top direction.

Similarly. I believe it would be unjust to fault the whole Arthur Andersen squad. To my understanding hearers are in general really ethical professionals. I do non believe the Enron audit squad was any different and the ground they failed to carry through their responsibility must be because of force per unit area from AA’s top direction. who cared merely for income from the confer withing concern. Due to the struggles of involvement mentioned above. it is non hard to conceive of AA’s confer withing division “recommending” that the scrutinizing squad comply with what Enron suggested. The top direction was at mistake for seting the hearers in such a hard state of affairs.

Promoting an ethical mentality among company leaders remains the key to avoiding another Enron dirt. Besides. regulators should make an environment in which all employees would be comfy going a whistle blower. Society and the media should picture whistle blowers as heroes and honor them with repute so that employees would non be afraid to step up and uncover unethical patterns to the populace. In 2012 former Olympus CEO Michael Woodford became a media hero after he revealed the company’s deceitful accounting patterns to the populace. This would surely give other future whistle blowers encouragement. cognizing that such behaviors will be well-received in the media. On the other manus. former Goldman executive Greg Smith was non as lucky when he questioned the civilization of Goldman Sachs. Many critics said that bad-mouthing a former employer is incorrect and that Mr. Smith will hold jobs looking for a new occupation. I have no thought whether Mr. Smith was stating the truth but I do non believe he should be punished in any manner for raising his concerns. Cipher will be willing to step up if Goldman Sachs is genuinely corrupted one twenty-four hours.

Decision
After Enron and WorldCom fell. regulators scrambled to ordain new statute law to reconstruct the unity of the concern universe. The consequence was the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley act. which established new criterions for external hearer independency and mandated that senior executives take single duty for the truth of fiscal studies. Although stockholders are now better protected with the new ordinances in topographic point. Enron is improbable to be the last company that tries to take advantage of legal loopholes. Human greed and the semblance of “too smart to be caught” will ever entice directors to happen new ways to perpetrate concern offense. It is indispensable for the concern community to advance concern moralss and promote whistleblowing behaviour in order to forestall another major concern dirt.

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