Enron - Publications - Faculty & Research

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 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

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

13 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

7 Lessons for Navigating the Storm

game who got hit with their own boomerang. As a result, many of these leaders have departed the scene, just as numerous corporate CEOs did in the wake of the Enron debacle earlier in the decade. Some of these leaders failed to follow... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

06 Jan 2003
Research & Ideas

Why Expensing Options Doesn’t Solve the Problem

at Enron had nothing to do with the failure to expense options. Rather, it related to a failure to disclose something else entirely on both the income statement and the balance sheet. Enron had taken... View Details

Keywords: by William Sahlman

13 May 2002
Op-Ed

A Cure for Enron-Style Audit Failures

If companies and regulators are ever to learn from the collapse of Enron—and prevent similar corporate debacles in the future—they must look more closely at the relationship between auditors, managers and the company audit committee. The View Details

Keywords: by Jay Lorsch; Accounting

03 Nov 2003
What Do You Think?

Can Investors Have Too Much Accounting Transparency?

restore credibility to financial markets? And if not through legislation and regulation, how then do we address the disease rather than the symptoms? What do you think? Original Article The collapse of companies like Enron and WorldCom... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

07 Jan 2015
Research & Ideas

The Quest for Better Layoffs

jobs." Luthra rebounded into other jobs, holding C-level positions at several multinationals. In 2001, 35 years after losing the IBM job, he took a gig as CEO of the broadband division at Enron India. View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Manufacturing

17 Jan 2007
Op-Ed

Learning from Private-Equity Boards

If Enron had been owned and controlled by a small group of private-equity investors, could the monitoring and control practices of a professionally run buyout shop have protected Enron's shareholders and employees from the problems that... View Details

Keywords: by Malcolm Salter; Financial Services

28 Feb 2011
Research & Ideas

The Importance of ‘Don’t’ in Inducing Ethical Employee Behavior

prevention of being unethical. (The paper will be published in the academic journal, "Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.") "Since the Enron scandal, there has been a lot of research across disciplines on... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

02 Feb 2007
What Do You Think?

Is There Too Little “Know Why” In Business?

one of these purposes, if pursued rigorously and successfully, is required for greatness. Putting mere goals, such as primarily making money, before purpose gets us an Enron or a Worldcom. The pity, according to Mourkogiannis, is that... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

22 Dec 2003
Research & Ideas

How to Build a Better Board

of investors and employees? It turns out that many of the boards of imploded companies such as Enron were composed of smart, honest, well-meaning, people. So what went wrong? How did these massive failures of corporate governance occur?... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

07 Oct 2002
Research & Ideas

What Leaders Need to Do To Restore Investor Confidence

insufficient institutional checks and balances. At Enron at the end of 1999, the options that were vested were worth $2.4 billion. That is too much temptation to put in front of people—temptation to sell out secretly, "cooking the... View Details

Keywords: by Harvard Management Update

19 Jan 2011
First Look

First Look: Jan. 18

are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

10 Mar 2014
Research & Ideas

Counting Up the Effects of Sarbanes-Oxley

Widely deemed the most important piece of security legislation since formation of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934, the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was born into a climate still reeling from the burst of the high-tech bubble and fraud scandals at... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Accounting; Banking

03 Sep 2009
What Do You Think?

Are Retention Bonuses Worth the Investment?

short-run performance of the kinds that led to the implosion of organizations like Enron and WorldCom. Retention bonuses are a special kind of performance pay. They provide an incentive to do nothing. That is, they encourage key people to... View Details

Keywords: by Jim Heskett

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

Three Steps for Crisis Prevention

the chain—failures of mobilization—occur when leaders recognize and give adequate priority to a looming problem but fail to respond effectively. When the Securities and Exchange Commission tried to reform the U.S. accounting system—well before the collapses of View Details

Keywords: by Michael D. Watkins & Max H. Bazerman

05 Aug 2002
Research & Ideas

Are Consumers the Cure for Broken Health Insurance?

contributions increased by more than $20 billion. Fidelity also found higher participation rates in smaller plans and roughly equal savings rates between active highly paid employees and others. The recent problems with the 401(k) plans of failed companies like View Details

Keywords: by Regina E. Herzlinger

05 Oct 2009
Research & Ideas

The Vanguard Corporation

were going to succeed and prosper needed to manage risks better, have a stronger sense of purpose to motivate their employees, and satisfy a public already agitated about scandals such as Enron in the corporate world. What I didn't see... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

Publications