...will analyse the groupthink’s concerns in the collapse of Enron. The collapse of Enron is less than three months, which Enron from a very prosperous company to a bankrupt enterprise. The collapse of Enron is one of the most grievous business failures in United States. This disastrous business failure had causes a large number of employees lost their jobs and retirement savings. Groupthink leads groups to make faulty judgments. Groupthink occurs when a group make wrong decisions as the pressures of group lead to deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment”. There are several symptoms of groupthink. The issues to be resolved for Enron are collective rationalization, stereotypes of out-group, illusion of invulnerability, deceit to increase shareholders’ investments and self-censorship. The causes of the case study are illusion of unanimity, self-appointed mindguards, complicated transactions, belief in inherent morality of the group and direct pressure in dissenters. The solutions to the case study are challenge the norms, discuss with trusted associates, forbid related-party transactions for the senior officers, monitor the power of CEO and assign the role of critical evaluator. When there are symptoms of groupthink, there must be solutions to prevent and solve. TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Purpose of the report 1.2 Company Background 2.0 SUMMARY OF THE CASE STUDY 3.0 GROUPTHINK 3.1 Definition of groupthink ...
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...Why Enron Failed By Suzy Bills In 2001, Americans were appalled to learn of the unethical practices carried out by leaders and other employees of Enron (as well as its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen). Enron used various methods of deception to appear more profitable than it really was, including through creating off-the-book entities to which Enron transferred its substantial debt (Jennings, 2005). While the company’s stock rose, so did its debt, and company leadership began using insider information and trading millions of dollars in company stock. When the scandal and impending bankruptcy were revealed, the company’s stock decreased from $90 to less than $1, a devastating hit to the financial market and numerous investors and employees (Betz, 2002). While the public was shocked at the numerous unethical financial practices, several organizational behavior theories, when applied to Enron, explain how such unethical activity could be permitted to take place. Chima (2005) describes organizational behavior as the result of the decisions of those who have obtained decision-making power, with the decisions reflecting the decision makers’ assessment of what is economically and politically beneficial for themselves and the company. Enron’s executives allowed themselves to be motivated much more by what would benefit themselves than what would truly benefit the company. The political model of organizational behavior describes this focus on self-interest (Chima, 2005). Money, greed...
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...| A Report on Enron’s Fall – Case Study | Submitted to: Prof. Vivek Raina | Submitted by: Kunal Bhaia (M00116), Vidhi Pitroda (M00143), Nirali Mehta (M00144) & Harsh Desai (M00148) 10/14/2013 | Table of Contents 1. Summary 3 2. Q-13 3. Q-25 4. Q-36 5. Conclusion6 1. Introduction Enron was founded in 1985, and as one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications and pulp and paper companies before it bankrupted in late 2001, its annual revenues rose from about $9 billion in 1995 to over $100 billion in 2000. Enron was the country's most innovative companies in the duration of 1990s. The company continued to build power plants and operate gas lines, but it became better known for its unique trading businesses. Besides buying and selling gas and electricity futures, it created whole new markets for such commodities like coal, water, electricity, gas etc... At the end of 2001 it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud. According to Thomas (2002), the drop of Enron's stock price from $90 per share in mid-2000 to less than $1 per share at the end of 2001, caused shareholders to lose nearly $11 billion. And Enron revised its financial statement for the previous five years and found that there was $586million in losses. Enron fall to bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. During this fraud...
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...The Rise and Collapse of Enron: Financial Innovation, Errors and Lessons Elisa S. Moncarz* Raúl Moncarz* Alejandra Cabello** Benjamin Moncarz*** Abstract Recent collapses of high profile business failures like Enron, Worldcom, Parmlat, and Tyco has been a subject of great debate among regulators, investors, government and academics in the recent past. Enron’s case was the greatest failure in the history of American capitalism and had a major impact on financial markets by causing significant losses to investors. Enron was a company ranked by Fortune as the most innovative company in the United States; it exemplified the transition from the production to the knowledge economy. Many lessons can we learn from its collapse. In this paper we present an analysis of the factors that contributed to Enron’s rise and failure, underlying the role that energy deregulation and manipulation of financial statements played on Enron’s demise. We summarize some lessons that can be learned in order to prevent another Enron and restore confidence in the financial markets, as well as in the accounting and auditing professions. Keywords: Enron, Corporate Ethics, Corporate Bankruptcy, Creative Accounting. Introduction T he rise and fall of high profile businesses like Enron, WorldCom, Parmlat and Tyco has been a subject of great debate and research among regulators, investors, government and academics in the recent years. Enron, for one, was the greatest failure *Professor-investigator...
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...Books Works by Lee Ann Obringer 1. [pic] 2. Page 3. 6 4. 7 5. 8 6. 9 7. [pic] Case Study: Enron Ads by Google Science Discovers God? Do New Scientific Discoveries Point to a Creator of the Universe? y-jesus.com Download Videos for Free See & Download Your Favorite Videos With Video Scavenger. It's Free! www.videoscavenger.com Business Card Templates Create Free Business Cards. Choose From Many Design Templates- Free! www.myscrapnook.com Background Once the seventh largest company in America, Enron was formed in 1985 when InterNorth acquired Houston Natural Gas. The company branched into many non-energy-related fields over the next several years, including such areas as Internet bandwidth, risk management, and weather derivatives (a type of weather insurance for seasonal businesses). Although their core business remained in the transmission and distribution of power, their phenomenal growth was occurring through their other interests. Fortune Magazine selected Enron as "America's most innovative company" for six straight years from 1996 to 2001. Then came the investigations into their complex network of off-shore partnerships and accounting practices. How the Fraud Happened The Enron fraud case is extremely complex. Some say Enron's demise is rooted in the fact that in 1992, Jeff Skilling, then president of Enron's trading operations, convinced federal regulators to permit Enron to use an accounting method known as "mark to market." This was a technique...
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...www.ccsenet.org/ijbm International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 5, No. 10; October 2010 The Case Analysis of the Scandal of Enron Yuhao Li Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University, Logan city, U.S.A E-mail: wyl_2001_ren@126.com, carolee1989@gmail.com Abstract The Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas, and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which was one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history at that time, Enron undoubtedly is the biggest audit failure. It is ever the most famous company in the world, but it also is one of companies which fell down too fast. In this paper, it analysis the reason for this event in detail including the management, conflict of interest and accounting fraud. Meanwhile, it makes analysis the moral responsibility From Individuals’ Angle and Corporation’s Angle. Keywords: Enron scandal, Accounting fraud, Moral responsibility, Analysis 1. Review of Enron’s Rise and Fall Throughout the late 1990s, Enron was almost universally considered one of the country's most innovative companies -- a new-economy maverick that forsook musty, old industries with their cumbersome hard assets in favor of the freewheeling world of e-commerce. The company continued to build power plants and operate gas lines, but it became...
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...www.ccsenet.org/ijbm International Journal of Business and Management Vol. 5, No. 10; October 2010 The Case Analysis of the Scandal of Enron Yuhao Li Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University, Logan city, U.S.A E-mail: wyl_2001_ren@126.com, carolee1989@gmail.com Abstract The Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, eventually led to the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas, and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which was one of the five largest audit and accountancy partnerships in the world. In addition to being the largest bankruptcy reorganization in American history at that time, Enron undoubtedly is the biggest audit failure. It is ever the most famous company in the world, but it also is one of companies which fell down too fast. In this paper, it analysis the reason for this event in detail including the management, conflict of interest and accounting fraud. Meanwhile, it makes analysis the moral responsibility From Individuals’ Angle and Corporation’s Angle. Keywords: Enron scandal, Accounting fraud, Moral responsibility, Analysis 1. Review of Enron’s Rise and Fall Throughout the late 1990s, Enron was almost universally considered one of the country's most innovative companies -- a new-economy maverick that forsook musty, old industries with their cumbersome hard assets in favor of the freewheeling world of e-commerce. The company continued to build power plants and operate gas lines, but it became...
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...The Enron Scandal The Enron Scandal Ethics is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as “The study of the general nature of morals and of specific moral choices; moral philosophy; and the rules of standards governing the conduct of the members of a profession”. The Enron scandal is already part of the history as one of the reasons why Business and Accounting Ethics had become more than ever a major concern in today’s businesses. In this paper we’ll review and analyze all the major reasons why will Enron collapse. To begin with, Enron in only 15 years grew rapidly and became of the biggest companies in the United States. Enron employed more than 21,000 people in more than 40 countries. Everything was running perfectly; however, one day unexpectedly the company stared to have major Accounting problems. Let’s review and list the facts : - Enron Corporation, created in 1985 by merger of Houston Natural Gas and Nebraska based InterNorth Natural Gas Company. - After the merger in February 1986, Ken Lay was named as the new company’s CEO and chairman of the board. He served from February 1986 to February 2001. He stepped down in February 2001 but reassumed the position in August 2001 until he resigned in January 2002. He was one of the top key players. - Soon after the Enron was created, the natural gas market got deregulated. Deregulation of the Nation's energy markets created tremendous challenges for the Enron and elimanitated its...
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...ALBERT MAINGI MUSYOKA D61/63378/2010 DAC: 606 ADVANCED ACCOUNTING SEMINAR A TERM PAPER PRESENTED FOR THE PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI JANUARY – APRIL 2012 Contents SUMMARY OF TERMS 3 ABSTRACT 4 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 5 LITERATURE REVIEW 6 a. Introduction 6 b. The Need for an Audit 7 c. Risk of fraud 8 d. The Auditor-Investor ''Expectation Gap'' 9 e. Auditing Profession and Challenges 9 f. Public opinion 10 g. Family or Personal Relationship 10 h. Integrity 11 i. Inherent limitations of an audit. 11 j. Responsibility of Auditors to Third Parties – Case Law 12 k. International, Assurance Auditing, Standards Board (IAASB) 14 CORPORATE FRAUD CASES 16 CASE STUDY: 21 CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………………………24 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………..….25 SUMMARY OF TERMS ISA: International standards of Audit KPC: Kenya Pipeline Company IAASB: International Assurance Audit Board IFAC: International Federation of Accounting USD: United States Dollar KCB: Kenya Commercial Bank BCCI: Bank of Credit International SEC: Securities and Exchange Commission ABSTRACT The way in which auditors perform their duties and the auditing profession in general raises questions and puts the auditors on the spotlight from clients who rely on their reports. Questions on whether the public trust the way auditors perform their secondary duty of detecting errors and frauds, the reliability, completeness and...
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...Enron Corp.: Credit Sensitive Notes Solution Posted on January 28, 2013 by admin — No Comments ↓ This case investigates an innovative bond issue by Enron. The coupon on the bond is indexed to the company’s credit rating, making it a credit derivative structure.« Hide by Sanjiv Das, Stephen Lynagh Source: Harvard Business School 16 pages. Publication date: Feb 28, 1997. Prod. #: 297099-PDF-ENG Case Study 2 – Enron and Arthur Andersen Enron Corporation Case Study 2 – Enron and Arthur Andersen Enron Corporation began as a small natural gas distributor and over the course of 15 years grew to become the seventh largest company in the United States. Soon after the federal deregulation of natural gas pipelines in 1985, Enron was born by the merging of Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, a Nebraska pipeline company. Initially, Enron was merely involved in the distribution of gas, but it later became a market maker in facilitating the buying and selling of futures of natural gas, electricity, broadband, and other products. However, Enron’s continuous growth eventually came to an end as a complicated financial statement fraud and multiple scandals sent Enron through a downward spiral to bankruptcy. During the 1980s several major national energy corporations began lobbying Washington to deregulate the energy business. Their claim was that the extra competition resulting from a deregulated market would benefit both businesses and consumers. Consequently, the national government began...
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...Enron Case Study Seven years after the fact, the story of the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the Enron Corporation continues to capture the imagination of the general public. What really happened with Enron? Outside of those associated with the corporate world, either through business or education, relatively few people seem to have a complete sense of the myriad people, places, and events making up the sixteen years of Enron’s existence as an American energy company. Some argue Enron’s record-breaking bankruptcy and eventual demise was the result of a lack of ethical corporate behavior attributed, more generally, to capitalism’s inability to check the unmitigated growth of corporate greed. Others believe Enron’s collapse can be traced back to questionable accounting practices such as mark-to-market accounting and the utilization of Special Purpose Entities (SPE’s) to hide financial debt. In other instances, people point toward Enron’s mismanagement of risk and overextension of capital resources, coupled with the stark philosophical differences in management that existed between company leaders, as the primary reasons why the company went bankrupt. Yet, despite these various analyses of why things went wrong, the story of Enron’s rise and fall continues to mystify the general public as well as generate continued interest in what actually happened. The broad purpose of this paper is to investigate the Enron scandal from variety perspectives. The paper begins with a narrative...
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...Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski, Carole Lager, Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin Enron and World Finance Also by Observatoire de la Finance From Bretton Woods to Basel Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 21, Spring 2005 Ethics of Taxation and Banking Secrecy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 12, Autumn 2002 Will the Euro Shape Europe? Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 9, Winter 2001–2 Dommen, E. (ed.) Debt Beyond Contract Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 2, 2001 Bonvin, J.-M. Debt and the Jubilee: Pacing the Economy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 1, 1999 Dembinski, P. H. (leading contributor) Economic and Financial Globalization: What the Numbers Say United Nations, Geneva, 2003 Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski Carole Lager Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin in association with the Observatoire de la Finance Selection, editorial matter and Chapters 1, 2 and 16 © Observatoire de la Finance Remaining chapters © contributors 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence ...
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...INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY:- Once the seventh largest company in America, Enron was formed in 1985 when InterNorth acquired Houston Natural Gas. The company branched into many non-energy-related fields over the next several years, including such areas as Internet bandwidth, risk management, and weather derivatives (a type of weather insurance for seasonal businesses). Although their core business remained in the transmission and distribution of power their phenomenal growth was occurring through their other interests. Fortune Magazine selected Enron as "America's most innovative company" for six straight years from 1996 to 2001. Then came the investigations into their complex network of off-shore partnerships and accounting practices The saga of the ENRON Corporation has been unfolding in the media for well over a year. In the span of only three years, ENRON has gone from public and professional acclaim of the company and its senior executives to scorn, infamy and bankruptcy. Its public auditing firm, Arthur Andersen, has basically been destroyed, as well as publicly disgraced. Tens of thousands of employees and investors have been emotionally and financially affected. Major financial services firms in banking, securities brokerage and insurance have been, and may yet be, drawn into the legal battles regarding who is to blame for the ENRON failure. Enron grew wealthy due largely to marketing, promoting power, and its high stock price. Enron was named "America's Most...
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...Case Study 1: Enron The story of Enron is one of corporate greed and intense competition. Former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling appears to be the person that created such competition between employees. He created a system where employees are ranked every six months, the employees ranked in the bottom 20% were forced out of the company. This ranking system led to a belief that high performance meant everything to the company. Ethical behavior was falling by the wayside at Enron and top executives either failed to notice it, or were too blinded by the stacks of money they were collecting to care. Sherron Watkins was a vice president at Enron. At the time she had been employed there eight years. It was at this time she was given the task of finding some assets to sell off. Watkins was quite possibly the first person to become concerned by Enron’s shoddy accounting practices. What she found was that many of Enron’s transactions were unclear at best, and most of them appeared to be backed only by their deflating stock. Concerned about what she saw she took her concerns to Mr. Ken Lay. Lay assured her that her concerns would be looked into by Vinson & Elkins, the company’s law firm. However, it appears that Vinson & Elkins quickly dismissed any concerns brought forward by Watkins. In fact, the law firm may have helped structure some of Enron’s special-purpose partnerships. The law firm never did claim liability, but did pay $30 million to Enron for...
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...Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski, Carole Lager, Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin Enron and World Finance Also by Observatoire de la Finance From Bretton Woods to Basel Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 21, Spring 2005 Ethics of Taxation and Banking Secrecy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 12, Autumn 2002 Will the Euro Shape Europe? Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, no. 9, Winter 2001–2 Dommen, E. (ed.) Debt Beyond Contract Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 2, 2001 Bonvin, J.-M. Debt and the Jubilee: Pacing the Economy Finance & the Common Good/Bien Commun, Supplement no. 1, 1999 Dembinski, P. H. (leading contributor) Economic and Financial Globalization: What the Numbers Say United Nations, Geneva, 2003 Enron and World Finance A Case Study in Ethics Edited by Paul H. Dembinski Carole Lager Andrew Cornford and Jean-Michel Bonvin in association with the Observatoire de la Finance Selection, editorial matter and Chapters 1, 2 and 16 © Observatoire de la Finance Remaining chapters © contributors 2006 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying...
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