Enron

Ethics

  1. In the Enron case there were several ethical issues. One of these issues was the way they moved debt from their book, which mislead thousands of people. When Enron removed their debt off the books it made the company look as if they were more profitable than they actually was. This caused many of innocence people to invest in the company and in the long run lost everything. Another ethical issue was that managers were receiving large sums of money for partnerships that were being formed. The ethics issue here is that thousands of Americans can only dream to earn such a large sum of money because of greed these individuals contributed to the downfall of Enron.
Then when share values dropped employees were not allowed to sell their stock and did not have access to their 410k plans. But of course the individuals that were involved with the embezzlement quickly sold their stock. The ethical issue with this is that the CEO, CFO all knew about the company’s stability situation but continued to ask both employees and third parties to continuing investing within the company.
  2. Numerous people were harmed by Enron’s collapse financial, emotional, and economical. Stockholders lost over a billion dollars in stock value. Thousand of employee lost their jobs, their retirement funds, and their health care benefits. Consumers in California suffered from energy shortages and blackouts that were caused by Enron’s manipulation of the market. Hundreds of businesses that worked with Enron as suppliers suffered economic loss with the loss of a large client. Enron’s accounting firm, Author Anderson, went out of business as a direct result. The wider Houston community was hurt by the loss of a major employer and community benefactor. Families of employees, investors, and suppliers were hurt. Many of the individuals directly involved with them suffer criminal and civil punishment, including jail sentences for some.
  3. The scandal at Enron was based on both the...