Learning Team Reflection Week

Demise of Arthur Anderson
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Arthur Anderson was an extremely reputable firm that performed both audit and accounting functions. Ethics in the company was not compromised and, for this reason, made the company well distinguished as compared to the others. However, after the death of its founder, towards the end of the 1998 scandals and issues began regarding this company. Unethical issues started cropping up where its employees engaged in gross misconduct of fraud with the companies they worked for. Profitability became the core of the business at the expense of other fundamental issues. Individuals who lacked ethical background as the owner took control of the firm and led to the collapse of a once highly reputable institution. After the demise of Anderson, there are some things that should have been done to prevent its collapse, and this is the focus of the paper.
Mechanisms that could have helped preventing organizational failure begins with leadership, they should have continued the high ethical values and instilled them in all employees. If managers enforced company policy along with putting a code of conduct in place, the culture would not have changed so drastically. Merging the consulting and auditing functions was a mistake, along with having people employed by more than one company created a conflict of interest leading to failure of the organization. Having employees, work at Enron was t...