Lack of Ethical Behavior in the Cases of Bernie Madoff and Enron

Business Ethics are defined as “moral principles that guide the way a business behaves” (Businesscasestudies, 2017). In order for any business or individual to act in an ethical

Enron was an energy trading and communications company located in Houston, Texas. During 1996-2001 Enron was given the name of America’s Most Innovative Company by Fortune magazine as it was the seventh-largest corporation in the US. The problem that led this company to bankruptcy was due to the fact that fraudulent accounting practices took place allowing Enron to overstate their earnings and tuck away their high debt liabilities in order to have a more appealing balance sheet (Forbes.com, 2002). Enron’s accounting team “cooked” the books to every meaning of the word so that their investors would not see anything wrong with the failing organization. This poorly structured company led people to jail time, unemployment, and caused retirement stocks to be dried up. Enron had a social responsibility to its stockholders and rather than being up front and honest about the failing company they hid every financial flaw in order to keep receiving money from its investors. By Enron not keeping a social

Ethics, in business, refers to moral principles and standards that define acceptable behavior in the world of business. Ethical decisions foster trust among individuals and in business relationships. Recognizing ethical issues is important in the workplace. An ethical issue is an identifiable problem requiring a person or organization to choose from among several actions that may be evaluated as ethical or unethical. When you’re determining is a situation is ethical or not, there are three factors to take into consideration. Individual factors, organizational factors, and opportunity. Individual factors are sets of principles that describe what a person believes are the right way to behave. Organizational factors include the influence of managers, coworkers, and the work group. Opportunity is a set of conditions that punish unfavorable behavior or reward favorable behavior. “Target thrives on competing to win in the marketplace. We compete and negotiate actively, but always with integrity. Taking advantage of anyone by manipulating or concealing

Ethics are principles of behaviour that distinguish between right and wrong. Resnik (2011) defines ethics as” a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analysing complex problems and issues” (p.1). People face ethical decisions; however, People working in business frequently face ethical decisions. Business ethics is the evaluation of business activities and behaviour as right or wrong (Society for Business Ethics, 1991).

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,

Business Ethics is a set of moral principles applied in the commercial world. Business ethics provide guidelines for acceptable behavior by organizations in both their strategy formulation and day-to-day operations. An ethical approach is becoming necessary both for corporate success and a positive corporate image. Following pressure from

Business ethics refers to the consideration of moral decisions and responsibilities in the process of operating a business. Business ethics, practiced throughout the deepest layers of a company, become the heart and soul of the company 's culture and can mean the difference between success and failure. Values drive behavior and therefore need to be consciously stated, but they also need to be affirmed by actions. Ethical business environments are created with foundations of integrity, accountability and commitment.

Even during these early days in business Mr. Madoff practiced some shady business ethics. Mr. Madoff began to have his father-in-law “manage” the new clients that he brought to invest with Bernie (PBS.org, 2009). Bernie was also not licensed as an investment advisor for the number of clients he had grown to serve. State and Federal securities regulation during the time period was slack and Mr. Madoff was just one of many advisors without proper licensing.

Question 1 Summarize 1 one page how you would explain Enron’s ethical meltdown: Enron was an energy company founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 through a merger of vast networks of natural gas lines. Enron specialized in wholesale, natural gas, and electricity, and made its money as a wholesaler between suppliers and customers rather than actually owning any. Enron in fact didn’t own any assets, which made their accounting procedures very unusual. The lack of accounting transparency at Enron allowed the company’s managers to make Enron’s financial performance better than it actually was. The organizational culture at Enron was to blame for it’s ethical meltdown. Enron’s accounting scheme slowly began to erode its ethical practices, which soon led the culture of Enron to become a more aggressive and misleading business practice. Enron reported profits from joint partnerships that were not yet attained in order to keep stock prices up (or make wall street happy). As this was happening employees began to notice the ethics in senior management (leadership) deteriorating, and soon after they to would follow in their footsteps. Senior management thought they were saving their company from financial ruin and though lying was ok if it meant saving the company. Investors would surely sell their stocks if they really knew the situation the

Ethical behavior, in a general sense, is a definition of moral behavior in regards to lawfulness, societal standards, and things of that nature. In the business world, ethics commonly refer to acceptable and unacceptable business practices within the workplace, and all other related environments. The acceptance of colleges regardless of ethnicity, gender, and beliefs, as well as truthfulness and honesty in relation to finances within the company are examples of ideal ethical business conducts. Unethical business behavior would include manipulating procedures based on bias or discrimination, engaging in activities that promote political gain, as well as blatant fabrication of monetary factors within the company and “can affect

Enron was founded in 1985 through the merger of Houston Natural Gas and Internorth (a natural gas company based in Nebraska). Enron quickly became the major energy and petrochemical commodities trader under the leadership of its chairman Kenneth Lay. Enron moved its operations online, boasting the largest online trading exchange in 1999, as one of the key market makers in natural gas, electricity, crude oil, petrochemicals and plastics. Enron also diversified into various businesses such as coal, shipping, steel & metals, pulp & paper, and even into such commodities as weather and credit derivatives. Enron was reporting revenues of $80 billion and profits of $1 billion at its peak. It was selected by Fortune as America’s most innovative company for six consecutive years.

Enron Corporation is one of the companies in the United States suffered from significant losses. Due to the embezzlement of money, the company filed bankruptcy in December 2001 with liability of more than 50 billion USD. The reason of failure of Enron case are related to one of the staff, Jeffrey Skilling who formed the executive staff to find and use the void that exists in accounting, special purpose entities, and production of precise financial statements which can hide billions of debt consequential from the project and agreement that the company failed.

Imagine one day owning thousands of shares in a multi-billion-dollar company worth million to then wake up the next to find out those shares are now worthless. This was the sad truth for many people and employees invested into the big power giant known as Enron in the early 2000s. Enron was a company formed in a merger that was a huge supplier of natural gas and electricity. Enron executives encouraged their accounting team to manipulate their financial statements to make their company performance look better than they actually were. As a result of this constant illegal practice, Enron declared bankruptcy in December 2001 after reporting a 3rd quarter loss of $618 million that sent their stock value plummeting (Corrupt Crimes). Former CEOs

In their personal and professional lives, people can and, unfortunately, sometimes do go against their moral and ethical standards. Ethical standards are what it means to be a good person, the social rules that govern our behavior. Ethics in business is essentially the study of what constitutes the right and wrong or the good or bad behavior in the workplace environment. A business is an organization whose objective is to provide goods or services for profit. The organization has a group of people that work together to achieve a common purpose. The moral challenges that these men and women face each day along with a whole range of problems that could occur, are why ethics plays such an important

Unfortunately, scandals like Enron are not isolated incidents and the last decade has offered Americans a disheartening perspective with comparable scandals like that of WorldCom and Tyco, Sunbeam, Global Crossing and many more. Companies have a concrete responsibility not just to their investors but to society as a whole to have practices which deter corporate greed and looting and which actively and effectively work to prevent such things from happening. This