ABSTRACT
Examples of people behaving unethically and engaging in corruption are plenty. Consider the classic case of Enron. Although the Enron case tends to be used frequently to illustrate individual unethical behavior, it is important to appreciate
how the company went from one of the most admired companies to oblivion. Enron collapsed in 2001 under a mountain of debt. Over time, several highranking officials in the company, including CEO Jeffrey Skilling, Chairman Ken Lay, and Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, condoned a number of practices that concealed the debt. For instance, they created special-purpose entities to move its assets and losses, thereby showing cash flow in the company. Skilling was also instrumental in creating a rank and yank system that basically ranked employees every six months, whereby the bottom 20% of employees were fired. This also created an atmosphere where employees were ready to lie to keep their jobs. Furthermore, many accounting improprieties occurred whereby investors were being misled. This all came to a crash in 2001.
