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- All HBS Web
(138)
- News (40)
- Research (98)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (45)
The Emergence of Charismatic Business Leadership
The Emergence of Charismatic Business Leadership is an examination of how the role of the business leader in the U.S. has changed from World War II to the present. A small number of high-profile individuals have transformed the face of modern-day... View Details
- 02 Feb 2011
- Working Paper Summaries
Lawful but Corrupt: Gaming and the Problem of Institutional Corruption in the Private Sector
- December 2010
- Article
The Case for Professional Boards
By: Robert C. Pozen
When the world's largest financial institutions had to be rescued from insolvency in 2008, many experts laid the blame at the feet of corporate boards. But insufficient board oversight is a problem that had supposedly been solved in 2002. As the United States... View Details
Keywords: Financial Institutions; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Governing and Advisory Boards; Failure; Accounting Audits; Quality; Behavior; Legal Liability; Experience and Expertise; Corporate Governance; Governance Controls; Performance Effectiveness; United States
Pozen, Robert C. "The Case for Professional Boards." Harvard Business Review 88, no. 12 (December 2010).
- 30 Apr 2024
- Book
When Managers Set Unrealistic Expectations, Employees Cut Ethical Corners
Bridgestone/Firestone (2000), related party transactions and accounting fraud at Enron (2001), accounting fraud at WorldCom (2002), corrupt payments at Siemens (2007), mortgage lending abuses at Countrywide Financial (2006) and Wall... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
- 01 May 2024
- What Do You Think?
Have You Had Enough?
Frank or Deceptive Should Leaders Be? (2009) Hurricane Katrina: What are the Lessons of New Orleans? (2005) The Enron scandal: What Can Business Schools Do to Avoid Bad Apples? (2002) The September 11 terrorist attacks: What Is 'Business... View Details
Keywords: by James Heskett
- 23 Jan 2023
- Research & Ideas
After High-Profile Failures, Can Investors Still Trust Credit Ratings?
rating agencies. High-profile failures of the agencies to predict catastrophes, like the Enron and WorldCom scandals, caused “everyone to wonder, ‘Where were the credit rating agencies?’” Sikochi explains. “Our paper answers the question,... View Details
Keywords: by Ben Rand
- 22 Nov 2010
- Research & Ideas
Seven Strategy Questions: A Simple Approach for Better Execution
the desired direction of the business. Strategic boundaries can also protect you from the types of errant actions that destroyed Enron and brought financial service firms such as Fannie Mae and Lehman Brothers to their knees. 5. How Are... View Details
Keywords: by Robert Simons
- 01 Mar 2019
- News
The Burden Legacy
incoming MBA Class of 2004 to restore confidence in America’s free enterprise system after public trust in business had been shaken by the Enron and WorldCom scandals. And in the wake of the global financial crisis, former Treasury... View Details
Keywords: Linda Kush
- 20 Apr 2011
- Research & Ideas
Blind Spots: We’re Not as Ethical as We Think
Think back to recent events when people making unethical decisions grabbed the headlines. How did auditors approve the books of Enron and Lehman Brothers? How did feeder funds sell Bernard Madoff's invesments? We would never act as they... View Details
Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne
- Profile
Madison McIlwain
(LCA) professor wrote the original cases on Enron before the company had been convicted of fraud. As he looked back at the work he did, he reflected on the power of combining data with instinct to trust your own intelligence and pattern... View Details
- 17 Apr 2022
- Book
How to Avoid the 'Ethical Slide' That Leads Companies Astray
sad parade of once-virtuous—but now notorious—white-collar criminals like Enron Chair Kenneth Lay, Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, and business maven Martha Stewart. A second unique aspect of business ethics is that they operate in a... View Details
Keywords: by Lane Lambert
- 06 Jul 2011
- Research & Ideas
Are You a Level-Six Leader?
of the modern world's greatest Opportunists. Also of this genre, although somewhat lesser known, is Jeffrey Skilling, the Enron CEO who sold off tens of millions of dollars of stock just before Enron filed... View Details
Keywords: by Mitch Maidique
- 17 Jan 2023
- Book
Good Companies Commit Crimes, But Great Leaders Can Prevent Them
convicted Enron executives—he concluded that their crimes were seldom calculated, but rather inspired by gut feelings and a striking absence of empathy for the clients who lost their money. Soltes talked to HBS Working Knowledge about the... View Details
Keywords: by Lane Lambert
- 28 May 2019
- Research & Ideas
Investor Lawsuits Against Auditors Are Falling, and That's Bad News for Capital Markets
when big scandals happen, like Enron and WorldCom, the weak link often turns out to be auditors. Managers are mostly truth-tellers but have incentives to embellish and sometimes commit fraud. So we rely on auditors to mitigate that... View Details
- 01 Dec 2022
- News
My First Job
to earn and fast to lose. That advice and my decision to resign were formative to my management and leadership philosophy throughout my career. For example, in the 1990s I was a vice president for a major Enron subsidiary. After I... View Details
- 17 Sep 2021
- Research & Ideas
The Trial of Elizabeth Holmes: Visionary, Criminal, or Both?
vision. By all accounts, she and the others at Theranos, all of them wanted Theranos to succeed. Their vision was incredible; it would have been transformative. The question is, at what point does that wishfulness and enthusiasm go from optimism to fraud? The leaders... View Details
- 01 Jun 2022
- What Do You Think?
Is Stakeholder Management Facing New Headwinds?
concluded that this thinking gained momentum after the scandalous failure of organizations like WorldCom and Enron 20 years ago. These companies supposedly were led and managed for the primary benefit of shareholders (and the top... View Details
Keywords: by James Heskett
- 01 Sep 2023
- News
The Exchange: Where Ethics Meet Economics
Max Bazerman and Mike Luca (Image by John Ritter) What makes people behave the way they do—and to what degree are design choices influencing that? Associate Professor Mike Luca studies the design of online platforms, while Professor Max Bazerman’s work focuses on... View Details
- 09 Dec 2002
- Research & Ideas
Most Accountants Aren’t Crooks—Why Good Audits Go Bad
recognized? The interpretation and weighting of various types of information are rarely straightforward. As Joseph Berardino, Arthur Andersen's former chief executive, said in his congressional testimony on the Enron collapse, "Many... View Details
- 19 Sep 2016
- Research & Ideas
Why Isn't Business Research More Relevant to Business Practitioners?
central criticism of the auditing institution—before Enron failed [in 2001],” says Bazerman, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at HBS, whose research focuses on business ethics. Let business practitioners know... View Details