Business Finance Homework Help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GdvKh3Gr3E

Introduction

This week in Chapter 2 you read about the environments of organizations and managers. This 3-minute video discusses the Enron scandal, revealed in October 2001, that 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 was attributed as the largest auditing failure as well.

Task

• As you watch the video, consider the following:
  • Your thoughts on Enron shutting down power plants to cash in on the resulting crisis. 
  • Why do you think the ethics of Enron got so out of hand?
• Respond to at least 2 of your peers.

student #1Rachel leidy

. I think Enron has some pretty poor management. I think that it really says a lot about their company that they were laughing at the citizens losing power so they could “make a little money”. It is no surprise that a company lead by such greedy people eventually went completely under. I think this relates back to manager x and manager y. I think Enron has a lot of manager x’s because they appear to think their employees are incompetent and aren’t doing enough for the company. So instead of making a business change, they would just rather fix the problem themselves by forcing people out of power and capitalizing on their misfortune. They don’t seem to care about anyone other than themselves. It seems like their managers could use more oversight.

2. I think Enron got to such a point of low ethics because of the high standards they had seemingly been holding. It is embarrassing to go from a highly reliable and consistent company to nothing. They tried preserving their pride by hiding the situation in their financial statements. Additionally, I think they liked the money coming in and they didn’t want that to end. Even the traders of Enron in the clip also seemed to fuel to the flames as they were making fun of people’s misfortune and gloating about how much money they are making. Money can do nasty things to people. 

student #2

Axel Tapia-vargas

The amount of Enron scandals that have emerged are countless, from accounting fraud to gambling, these scandals put employees and their carriers as well as shareholders’ wealth on the line all just so that the company could profit. the fact that Enron was willing to place the general public well fair in jeopardy by shutting down power plants causing blackouts in numerous injuries for their own benefit is extremely unethical. This broke many pillars of business ethics such as trust, responsibility and, the relationship with consumers. They risked the lives of the public for their own gain.

I believe that the reason that Enron’s ethics were so corrupted stems from the top. With the CEO Ken Lays ethics not being lousy. In the CBS video, a former Enron employee states that “nothing happened at Enron that Ken Lay didn’t bless.” which shows that Lay had a hand in all of this from the start. Unfortunately, these lousy business practices had a trickle-down effect throughout the whole company. This created a culture of unethical business practices as long as they created revenue. The competitive atmosphere and unethical practices of employees and owners of Enron created a toxic money-hungry work environment that ended up being Enron’s demise.