Enron

Enron's demise sounds like a great work of fiction but the more I hear of the issues I think of a child. Children bring attention to themselves; they need supervision, guidance, love, and most importantly discipline. For the most part Enron received so much love from everywhere and everyone including there own employees. At the top though the children were running the company without supervision. The demise of the Enron began with management.

The fall out of Enron unearthed all manners of lawless behavior by employees. Many of those tasks had been given to them by their superiors. Since it was the bottom-line that only mattered corruption spread like a weed throughout the companies leadership. In crisis situations corruption knows-no-bounds bringing to the surface the values of its leadership. Throughout the 2000 and 2001 crises at Enron, Skilling and other leaders reacted to crises by constantly shifting blame, shredding documents, lying overtly, or lying by omission. The message was that ethical wrongdoing should be hidden at all cost. Deceiving investors, employees, the government and illegal partnerships would become an everyday task.

Company rewarded those who, despite what the 'Code of Ethics' spoke of, even promoted employees who had plainly disregarded policy or executives' decisions when their disobedience proved profitable. This again stressed the bottom line well above ethics. Enron's leadership would create a distrustful cutthroat groupthink environment. This win-at-all mixing with personal gain, regardless of the means to get there; would self-destruct the picture-perfect, Top 100 Company, turning it into the worse embarrassment to any economy.

In my experience if the stronger (personalities) individuals will control the weaker individuals in the group. Some will leave or be ostracized but those that stay will adopt the social behaviors of the stronger reinforcing the 'leaders'