Enron, An American Energy Company - 1587 Words

Enron Leadership One of the best examples recently seen relating to bad leadership is what took place within Enron. Throughout the late ‘90’s, Enron, an American energy company, was considered one of the country s most innovative companies; while the company continued to build power plants and operate gas lines, it became better known for its unique trading businesses (npr.org, 2014). It can be described as the ideal company for the dotcom-driven stock market boom of the 90s; Enron threw itself head-on onto the internet, and Wall Street loved it, rocketing its stock upward (npr.org, 2014). At the all-time high, Enron was worth $70 billion and its shares traded around $90 each (npr.org, 2014). All this ended when the company stated†¦show more content†¦At the top of this enormous fraud case was Kenneth Lay. The evidence will show the unethical tactics that took place, as well as how the leaders used these tactics in their strategy, using their power. Evidence will additio nally show the outcome of the Enron disaster and what could have been done differently. Unethical Tactics With a brief overview of Enron given, the unethical tactics that took place amongst the leadership in Enron is important for discussion. At the head of all the unethical tactics lay Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, who is the most recent and visible cases of alleged CEO failure to act accountable and responsible (Ferrell Ferrell, 2010). According to Ferrell and Ferrell (2010), no other high-ranking executive has had as much of an impact on the scrutiny of business ethics in America than Ken Lay, making Enron the ultimate example of corporate wrongdoing. Of the employees involved, there were 22 that were indicted or convicted; to show how deep the wrongdoings went, there were 130 unindicted co-conspirators that worked for Ken Lay (Ferrell Ferrell, 2010). This goes to show the influence, though negative, he had down the line. Culture plays a big part in organizations, and ethical rule bending was a part of the midlevel management corporate culture at Enron (Ferrell Ferrell, 2010). E nron has been described as having a culture of arrogance,