Enron Ethical Dilemmas

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When an ethical dilemma arises within an organization, it is difficult to separate right and wrong with what is best for the majority. Sometimes the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no.” In 2002, Enron Corporation shows us just that. By 2002, the sixth-largest corporation in America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The case of the Enron scandal is one of the best examples of corporate greed and fraud in America. Enron had rose to the top by engaging in energy projects worldwide and speculating in oil and gas futures on the world’s commodities markets. They also provided financial support to some presidential candidates and members of the U.S. Congress. However, Enron had a secret. The corporation had created partnerships located in off-shore Enron’s stock price fell from 90 dollars to 50 cents a share. Because of the executive’s choice, the employees lost their entire pension fund and any other money they had invested in the company. As soon as the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was investigating the Enron scandal, Enron began to shred any documents relevant to the investigation. Even the accounting firm that provided auditing for Enron, Andersen LLP, began to shred files as well. The best ethical solution for this case is obviously to have not committed a crime at all. The Enron executives should have taken a step back and looked at what they were doing and gathered their facts. They were committing fraud by creative accounting, acting illegally when using insider trading and shredding their documents relevant to the investigation. Next consider the stakeholders. Anyone who owns stock in the company would suffer along with every employee. Under the values bullet we can assume that they had none. Greed and power got the better of every one of them. An alternative action the company could have taken was to admit the truth and try to find a solution to that one problem instead of committing more illegal acts to add on to the pile. They also could have stopped and brainstormed legal ideas to make more money before all of this started. Enron According to the Deontology method ethical behavior can be measured to an absolute set of standards. So, according to deontology the answer is almost a simple “yes” or “no.” This method is guided by morals. Therefore, any illegal action would not be approved of. The Kantian method is based around the principle of “What if everyone acted in the same way?” If every executive showed compassion towards the lower level employees, the employees may have made it out of this situation unscathed. The Utilitarianism method is consequence oriented. It is based on “The greatest happiness for the greatest number.” Again, there were more employees than executives. Making a couple times the amount that employees make, the executives could have spared

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