Ethics and Organizational Culture

Answer the questions to the case, "Enron, Ethics, and Organizational Culture," at the end of Chapter 8. Include at least one outside source supporting your answers. Explain your answers in 200.

Case Incident: Enron, Ethics, and Organizational Culture

For many people, a company called Enron Corp. still ranks as one of history’s classic examples of ethics run amok. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Enron was in the business of wholesaling natural gas and electricity. Rather than actually owning the gas or electric, Enron made its money as the intermediary (wholesaler) between suppliers and customers. Without getting into all the details, the nature of Enron’s business, and the fact that Enron didn’t actually own the assets, meant that its accounting procedures were unusual. For example, the profit statements and balance sheets listing the firm’s assets and liabilities were unusually difficult to understand.

It turned out that the lack of accounting transparency enabled the company’s managers to make Enron’s financial performance look much better than it actually was. Outside experts began questioning Enron’s financial statements in 2001. In fairly short order, Enron’s house of cards collapsed, andcourts convicted several of its top executives of things like manipulating Enron’s reported assets and profitability. Many investors (including former Enron employees) lost all or most of their investments in Enron.

It’s probably always easier to understand ethical breakdowns like this in retrospect, rather than to predict they are going to happen. However, in Enron’s case the breakdown is perhaps more perplexing than usual. As one writer said, “Enron had all the elements usually found in comprehensive ethics and compliance programs: a code of ethics, a reporting system, as well as a training video on vision and values led by [the company’s top executives].”111

Experts subsequently put forth many explanations for how a company that was apparently so ethical on its face could actually have been making so many bad ethical decisions without other managers (and the board of directors) noticing. The explanations ranged from a “deliberate concealment of information by officers” to more psychological explanations (such as employees not wanting to contradict their bosses), and the “surprising role of irrationality in decision-making.”112

But perhaps the most persuasive explanation of how an apparently ethical company could go so wrong concerns organizational culture. The reasoning here is that it’s not the rules but what employees feel they should do that determines ethical behavior. For example, (speaking in general, not specifically about Enron) the executive director of the Ethics Officer Association put it this way:

• [W]e’re a legalistic society, and we’ve created a lot of laws. We assume that if you just knew what those laws meant that you would behave properly. Well, guess what? You can’t write enough laws to tell us what to do at all times every day of the week in every part of the world. We’ve got to develop the critical thinking and critical reasoning skills of our people because most of the ethical issues that we deal with are in the ethical gray areas. Virtually every regulatory body in the last year has come out with language that has said in addition to law compliance, businesses are also going to be accountable to ethics standards and a corporate culture that embraces them.113

How can one tell or measure when a company has an “ethical culture”? Key attributes of a healthy ethical culture include:

• Employees feel a sense of responsibility and accountability for their actions and for the actions of others.114

• Employees freely raise issues and concerns without fear of retaliation.

• Managers model the behaviors they demand of others.

• Managers communicate the importance of integrity when making difficult decisions.

QUESTIONS

Based on what you read in this chapter, summarize in one page or less how you would explain Enron’s ethical meltdown.

2.

It is said that when one securities analyst tried to confront Enron’s CEO about the firm’s unusual accounting statements, the CEO publicly used vulgar language to describe the analyst, and that Enron employees subsequently thought doing so was humorous. If true, what does that say about Enron’s ethical culture?

3.

This case and chapter both had something to say about how organizational culture influences ethical behavior. What role do you think culture played at Enron? Give five specific examples of things Enron’s CEO could have done to create a healthy ethical culture.