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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(138)
- News (40)
- Research (98)
- Multimedia (1)
- Faculty Publications (45)
- 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
- 01 May 2019
- Blog Post
Viewpoints: Synthetic Thinking with a Humble Mindset
Bethany McLean and John Carreyrou, join us to discuss the topic of building and maintaining trust in businesses. My takeaway from this session was that, while trust is valuable, the extreme level of trust is not; Enron and Theranos cases... View Details
- 01 Dec 2009
- News
An Action Plan for Economic Recovery
process backed by capital, we’re not going to revive securitization. Corporate boards have been criticized for being asleep at the wheel leading up to last year’s financial meltdown. Are boards at fault? After Enron and WorldCom, Congress... View Details
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 01 Dec 2004
- News
One-on-One with William H. Donaldson
Donaldson Illustration by Joe Ciardiello When William Donaldson (MBA ’58) was sworn in as the 27th chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 18, 2003, Wall Street and the commission itself were in turmoil. A wave of corporate scandals that started... View Details
- 27 Jan 2009
- First Look
First Look: January 27, 2009
behavior and practices led Enron down the path from truly innovative to fraudulent management? How could Enron’s board of directors have failed to detect the business, ethical, and legal risks embedded in the company’s aggressive... View Details
Keywords: Martha Lagace
- 01 Jun 2009
- News
Too Big To Fail
tech bubble burst in 2001. Accounting scandals destroyed Enron in 2001 and WorldCom in 2002. And the current global financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, has yet to run its course. It’s no accident that all these... View Details
- 08 Sep 2003
- Research & Ideas
A Bold Proposal for Investment Reform
acquired dot-com stocks that showed poor reported financial performance, and which they recognized were wildly overvalued. Fund managers owned 60 percent of Enron at its peak (and beyond) despite the company's lofty multiples that were... View Details
- 24 Mar 2002
- Research & Ideas
The Trick of Balancing Business and Government
Enron in the United States, "it's very easy for that [relationship] to get corrupted," said Spar. "Getting that balance right is critical." View Details
Keywords: by Martha Lagace
- 01 Sep 2010
- News
Letters to the Editor
outside directors’ committees do everything else. The best way to ensure that directors carry out their responsibilities is to indict outside directors for malfeasance when they fail to do so. Enron was a perfect example of malfeasance... View Details
- 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
- 14 Nov 2019
- News
Keeping Red Lobster Fresh
this was this was you may you may be too young for this, but there was there was a time when we had a bunch of a number of companies like Enron and WorldCom and HealthSouth and having all these corporate scandals. And I actually was part... View Details