“Money and sex motivate people, Andy. And money is the one thing that gets their hands off their dicks and into work” (Prebble, Act 1 Scene 5). And so with dicks and dollar bills flying all over the place, “Enron” by Lucy Prebble opens the curtain for us, the audience and participants of consumers, to look into the backstage of the notorious Enron collapse in 2001, revealing the discourse and bizarreness of the corporate culture. From the coexisting affair and competition between Skilling and Roe, to the hissing raptors eating up debt from the dark basement of Andy Fastow’s office, the darkest characters of Man are brought under examination and questioned with the unethical rise and the inevitable fall of Enron. With its plot rooted from a …show more content…
Through out the entire plot, these two characters were so absorbed in accomplishing the goals of profiting for the corporate that they did not realize the immorality and dangers that their actions bring to the rest of the society. It was to a degree where they seemed to not only sacrificed their personal lives for their work life, but their worth as people only depended on the financial number that their business is generating. Perhaps just like Skilling and Fastow, Prebble is displaying to us that we are all too entrenched in corporate culture that we are losing our worth and values as people. Surrounded by numbers and only concerns with financial profit, we are numbed by the corporate culture around us; the struggle for power within the structure of a company pulls us away from our ethical judgement and clouds the motivations of work: providing a better life for our loved ones and securing the means through which we can seek happiness and security in this society. Perhaps, when Roe was marginalized in the play and eventually lose out in the struggle for power, she won in the sense that she was able to go home and embrace her values and worth as a person once more. Her bitter exit would, I imagine, be a better option than to stay and experience …show more content…
As we lose ourselves and our values, worth, and identity as people in the corporate culture, the objectives of monetary profit, status within a company, and machine-like work ethics replace our ethical judgement and our values as people. Perhaps there is nothing we can do about it; after all Skilling and Fastow did not realize what they were doing is immoral and illegal until they were sentenced or even released from their sentence. We are all too absorbed in this capitalistic corporate world we live in. Just like the ancient Chinese philosopher Fu Xuan said, “He who is close to the ink will be stained black,” (Fu, “Prince Shao Fu Xuan”), We have been too used to the immorality and unethical practices of corporate culture that we’re not only numb to the wrongdoings of others within this capitalist society, but we also replace our values as people and our ambitions to do good with objectives of the corporate world. Prebbles posed us the question that after centuries of capitalism’s existence in our society, will our ambitions to do good prevail against our monetary desires and the corporate norm of only profit-driven decisions? Sadly, the answer that we can find in Enron is
Many organizations have been destroyed or heavily damaged financially and took a hit in terms of reputation, for example, Enron. The word Ethics is derived from a Greek word called Ethos, meaning “The character or values particular to a specific person, people, culture or movement” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 2007, p. 295). Ethics has always played and will continue to play a huge role within the corporate world. Ethics is one of the important topics that are debated at lengths without reaching a conclusion, since there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s basically depends on how each individual perceives a particular situation. Over the past few years we have seen very poor unethical business practices by companies like Enron, which has affected many stakeholders. Poor unethical practices affect the society in many ways; employees lose their job, investors lose their money, and the country’s economy gets affected. This leads to people start losing confidence in the economy and the organizations that are being run by the so-called “educated” top executives that had one goal in their minds, personal gain. When Enron entered the scene in the mid-1980s, it was little more than a stodgy energy distribution system. Ten years later, it was a multi-billion dollar corporation, considered the poster child of the “new economy” for its willingness to use technology and the Internet in managing energy. Fifteen years later, the company is filing for bankruptcy on the heels of a massive financial collapse, likely the largest in corporate America’s history. As this paper is being written, the scope of Enron collapse is still being researched, poked and prodded. It will take years to determine what, exactly; the impact of the demise of this energy giant will be both on the industry and the
The Fastows headed to Mrs. Fastow's native Houston in 1990, both taking jobs at a young company called Enron. Just five years old, Enron was starting to evolve from a natural-gas and pipeline company into a trading firm. Mr. Fastow was one of the first managers hired by Mr. [Jeffrey Skilling], who himself had only recently arrived, from management consultants McKinsey & Co. Brought into Mr. Skilling's inner circle, Mr. Fastow returned the loyalty, telling colleagues he had named a child after his mentor. When Mr. Skilling became Enron's president and chief operating officer in early 1997, he and Mr. [Kenneth Lay] promoted Mr. Fastow to lead a new finance department. A year later, Mr. Fastow became chief financial officer.
It's difficult not to be cynical about how “big business” treats the subject of ethics in today's world. In many corporations, where the only important value is the bottom line, most executives merely give lip service to living and operating their corporations ethically.
Investors and the media once considered Enron to be the company of the future. The company had detailed code of ethics and powerful front men like Kenneth Lay, who is the son of a Baptist minister and whose own son was studying to enter the ministry (Flynt 1). Unfortunately the Enron board waived the company’s own ethic code requirements to allow the company’s Chief Financial Officer to serve as a general partner for the partnership that Enron was using as a conduit for much of its business. They also allowed discrepancies of millions of dollars. It was not until whistleblower Sherron S. Watkins stepped forward that the deceit began to unravel. Enron finally declared bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, leaving employees with out jobs or money.
Enron “Boosted profits and hid debts totaling over $1 billion by improperly using off-the-books partnerships; manipulated the Texas power market; bribed foreign governments to win contracts abroad; manipulated California energy market” (Brag, 2002, para. 9). The behavior exhibited by Enron’s former CEO Kenneth Lay showed that large and successful appearing companies are not exempt from human error. This human error caused unethical decisions to be made that adversely affected thousands of lives.
It was discovered that Enron’s stated financial condition was prolonged by established, inventively, and methodically planned accounting fraud at the end of 2001. It has been since called the Enron scandal. Enron has subsequently become a popular example of deliberate corporate corruption and fraud. This scandal
The three main crooks Chairman Ken Lay, CEO Jeff Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow, are as off the rack as they come. Fastow was skimming from Enron by ripping off the con artists who showed him how to steal, by hiding Enron debt in dummy corporations, and getting rich off of it. Opportunity theory is ever present because since this scam was done once without penalty, it was done plenty of more times with ease. Skilling however, was the typical amoral nerd, with delusions of grandeur, who wanted to mess around with others because he was ridiculed as a kid, implementing an absurd rank and yank policy that led to employees grading each other, with the lowest graded people being fired. Structural humiliation played a direct role in shaping Skilling's thoughts and future actions. This did not mean the worst employees were fired, only the least popular, or those who were not afraid to tell the truth. Thus, the corrupt culture of Enron was born. At one point, in an inter...
BUAD2172 Movie Reviews For each of the assigned movies, you will complete a Movie Review and turn it into GA View by the time designated in your Course Schedule. 1. Summary of the Movie. a. The movie Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room is a documentary about how the seventh largest company went from $65M in assets to bankrupt in a month. The story generally focuses on the masterminds at the top that created this smoke show, knowing what they were doing was illegal and usually at the cost of the average American. They didn’t care because greed, arrogance, and pride fueled them. The main focus of this story is on Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay and COO Jeff Skilling. The film shows video footage of these men on trial, secret footage of business
Enron Corporation was based in Houston, Texas and participated in the wholesale exchange of American energy and commodities (ex. electricity and natural gas). Enron found itself in the middle of a very public accounting fraud scandal in the early 2000s. The corruption of Enron’s CFO and top executives bring to question their ethics and ethical culture of the company. Additionally, examining Enron ethics, their organization culture, will help to determine how their criminal acts could have been prevented.
This chapter presents an analysis of what now have become the popular study cases in corporate ethics, the notorious Enron and WorldCom. The chapter also discusses new ethical implications for people holding MBA and CPA degrees. In Chapter Two titled, “Law, Ethics and Society”, in this chapter, Mclemore explores the relationship between law and ethics and describes what people can do if they are being pressured to act unethically. In chapter three titled, “Threats, Risks, and Options”, Mclemore discusses the psychological issues that all those involved may have to face regarding ethical violations and decision-making. The author found a particular quote in this chapter that stood out to her.
Tyco provides products and services across the world. The company is global and diversified providing a variety of products including electronics, healthcare, fire and security services and engineered products and services. While employing over 250,000 people worldwide they grossed approximately $40 billion in revenue in the year 2005. In 2002 Tyco was involved with the corporate scandal where the management mis-appropriated corporation funds. The previous CEO Dennis Kozlowski was convicted in 2005 on 22 counts of the 23 that he was charged with. This is an example of not only a legal issue of responsibility but also one of an ethical issue that the Tyco Corporation has had to face. In the face of the legal and ethical issues that this mishap had placed the corporation in, Tyco placed Ed Breen in as chairman and CEO. Mr. Breen joined the company in 2002 after the scandal and immediately began the rebuild of the company’s name. With the appointment of Ed Breen and his changing of the company’s ethical standards (to be discussed in the next portion of the paper) he promotes the legal responsibilities of not only the company’s employees but the responsibilities of the suppliers and buyers to report any wrong doing. This reporting also speaks to the ethics of the Tyco corporation employees as well as those of the companies th...
“When a company called Enron… ascends to the number seven spot on the Fortune 500 and then collapses in weeks into a smoking ruin, its stock worth pennies, its CEO, a confidante of presidents, more or less evaporated, there must be lessons in there somewhere.” - Daniel Henninger.
Basically everything that Enron claimed was profitable was nothing more than a debt. This behavior was unethical, and it was unethical on the leaders in the company who chose that falsifying documents was the way to go. Because of the selfishness of the top executives at Enron their actions caused thousands of people to be laid off, and employees even lost their retirement savings (Ferrell, Hirt, & Ferrell, 2009). In
The Enron Corporation was an American energy company that provided natural gas, electricity, and communications to its customers both wholesale and retail globally and in the northwestern United States (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Top executives, prestigious law firms, trusted accounting firms, the largest banks in the finance industry, the board of directors, and other high powered people, all played a part in the biggest most popular scandal that shook the faith of the American people in big business and the stock market with the demise of one of the top Fortune 500 companies that made billions of dollars through illegal and unethical gains (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Many shareholders, employees, and investors lost their entire life savings, investments,
Business nowadays encounter with a lot of moral challenges in today’s global economy. Everyone is thriving to be more successful than their competitors, to make their next profits, to keep their job, to earn a big bonus, or to compete effectively. There exists temptation to bend lines, omit information, and do whatever it takes to get ahead of their competition. Many business employees and executives succumb. Sadly, the theme becomes...