Essays on Skilling

Background

Enron case study dwells upon one of the most known scandals in business ethics and financial world. Founded in 1985 as a result of the merger between Houston Natural Gas and Internorth, Enron Corporation starts trading natural gas commodities in 1989. Throughout the 90s,the company was considered one of the most innovative and attractive for investment companies in the country. Renown for its unique business model and trading businesses, the company benefitted from a positive image, shareholder trust and external financing (Li, 2010). With a number of changes in leadership from Jeffrey Skilling to Kenneth Lay, who occupied ...

Charismatic leadership in relation to Weber’s theory is the perception of the sub-ordinates that a leader has an attractively inspired gift, which will change their lives extraordinary (Sendjaya, 2015). It is based on the characteristics of the leaders like passion, confidence, and high level ability to influence people. However, these abilities of the leaders sometimes contribute to dysfunctional attitudes, such as high level egoism and self-centralism (Van Wart, 2014). In other words, a leader can be positive charismatic leader or negative charismatic leader. The leader with positive charismatic leadership abilities is oriented to others, whereas the leader with ...

Alexander (2007) tells us that duty ethics, or deontology, is a normative theory regarding what people should do, rather than what they should be. Hence, duty ethics is chiefly concerned with actions people take, rather than the consequences stemming from those actions. Deontology, in broad strokes, posits that if an action is right in principle, then there is no moral obligation forbidding that action – it need not be avoided, regardless of consequences. Deontological theories are best understood in contrast to their consequentialist counterparts (Alexander, 2007). Consequentialism dictates that actions or intentions ought to be judged by the state of ...

Enron did not focus on actually supplying oil and gas, like a traditional company would. Instead, Enron oriented their efforts towards buying futures (investments predicting the future price of a commodity) in oil. The company also bought electricity from generators and sold it to consumers. One of the bold moves that the Company carried out was the signing of marketing agreement for a year, which was the first in the industry, with Calpine Corporation. According to the agreement, the natural gas daily prices would be linked with the electricity prices. Another example would be the signing of contract for ...

Company and Situation

In the period following the late 1990s, Thomas (2002) mentions that Enron Company was regarded as one of the outstanding, as well as, most innovative companies in the American state. The entity continued with its bid of building new power plants and operating other gas lines. It was also well-known for its unique methods of trading. However, all these prospects came tumbling down when it admitted to having misrepresented its incomes and that the company’s value of equity was less than the one stated in the balance sheet. In this light, the following paper will conduct research regarding ...