Ethical Contradictions and E-Mail Communication at Enron Corporation

Ethical Contradictions and E-Mail Communication at Enron Corporation
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Anna and Joann used the case of Enron corporation to determine the manner in which moral silence within an organization can have a negative impact on its decision-making process which in turn lead to its failure. As well, they addressed the issue of over-identification which causes the failure of employees to raise concerns about the behavior of other workers. In addition, the case study outlines the manner in which the love for huge profits resulted in ethical dilemmas of loyalty versus truth.
In regard to the moral silence concept, most of the employees are afraid of confronting other employees to question them about the bad behavior that they express in the workplace (Bird 1996). In most cases, moral silence is caused by the management failing to acknowledge the existence of unethical practices. In the case of Enron, the company reveals a culture that praises leadership and the failure to ask questions whenever the employees feel that something is not going right. This is evidenced by the emails sent to the CEO Ken Lay. The employees suspected that the top leaders were not being ethical and that the external stakeholders of the company were being lied to. However, due to the culture of the organization that employees should not question the actions of their leaders, it was difficult for any of them to raise concerns. The emails reveal that the employees of Enron practiced the moral silence concept and, this played a substantial role in the collapse of the company. As well, the emails indicate that the employees were also able to finally question about the unethical practices that were taking place at Enron.
According to Anna and Jennie, Enron was formed through a merger, and its CEO was Ken Lay. Also, Jeff Skilling because of the company's president in the year 1989 and later the COO. Within the course of those years, Enron transformed its activities from a pipeline company and began to operate electrical power plants and gas. During this period, the company made good use of the values of integrity, communication, excellence, and respect hence being named as one of the most innovative companies in the market. It also had a substantial increase in the number of employees that it hired due to the expansion of its businesses. As well, Fastow was made the CFO of Enron and, it is during this time that he started using the off-balance sheet method to conceal the losses that the company was making. The shares were valued in accordance with the market price instead of their actual price hence portraying an image to the public that the company was financially okay. By the year 2001, various media houses were questioning the manner in which Enron was able to make such huge profits. This led to the resignation of Skilling and the massive layoff of workers. Sherron Watkins, sent a memo to Ken Lay, pointing out the various accounting problems but he did not take any action. Instead, he took the advantage of selling an approximation of $20 million of the company stock by lying to the buyers that the company was in a good financial position and that they would not regret having purchased the shares. This is an indication of th...