2. What was the culture at Lehman Brothers like? How did this culture contribute to the company’s downfall? Lehman’s culture had a lot of risk taking and employees were paid handsomely. There were individuals making questionable decisions and others were rewarding this behavior. People who questioned the ways of the company or other employees were ignored and their ideas were overruled. This lead to their downfall because employees like Oliver Budde tried to make the public filings correct and nothing was done about it. Even with the insurance issue Budde warned them and told them that it wasn’t the right thing, but again he was ignored and the deal was made. Decisions and risks like that are what made this company go downhill.

3. What role did Lehman’s executives play in the company’s collapse? Were they being responsible and ethical? Discuss. The executives that “could have done better” had poor conduct with inculpable errors of business judgment, balance sheet manipulation, filing misleading periodic reports. They were being both irresponsible and unethical. They were cheating the system by producing false information to the public and to put more money into their own pockets.

5. After all the public uproar over Enron and then the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to protect shareholders, why do you think we still continue to see these types of situations? Is it unreasonable to expect that businesses can and should act ethically? It is not unreasonable to expect businesses to act ethically, they just don’t do it. Most businesses do what they have to do legally and still cut corners. They hire people part time and have them work 39 hours so they don’t have to provide benefits, that’s unethical. We see these types of situations in my opinion because government is putting a tight hold on corporations and want them to follow certain rules and regulations