Enron - Publications - Faculty & Research

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

Keywords: by Malcolm S. Salter; Financial Services

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

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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

Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Financial Services; Accounting

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

Keywords: by Christina Pazzanese, Harvard Gazette; Biotechnology; Technology; Medical Devices & Supplies

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

Keywords: Business Schools & Computer & Management Training; Educational Services

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

Keywords: Jen McFarland Flint; Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services; Information

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

Keywords: by Max H. Bazerman, George Loewenstein & Don A. Moore; Accounting; Financial Services

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

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

Publications