Enron Corporation – Training Programs
R Patel
LDR/531 Organizational Leadership
May 30, 2010
Mary Jamison
Enron Corporation – Training Programs
In late 2001, Enron Corporation filed for Bankruptcy protection. Greed was at the center of Enron’s demise. The idea that a corporation the size of Enron would falsify financial statements is appalling. Could Enron have avoided its demise by developing various training programs and assigning internal teams to monitor these programs? Greed would eventually have led to Enron’s downfall, but implementing training programs would have given Enron’s management team an opportunity to change the corporate culture and work environment. Ethics, corporate compliance, and internal audit are three areas where a training program managed by an internal team could have helped the Enron Corporation. Creating a mix of rewards for these internal teams would have helped motivate the teams to perform admirably. Robbins and Judge (2007) define motivation as “the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal” (p. 186). For the internal teams to be successful, Enron needs to create an environment that motivates the team members.
Ethics
Ethical behavior was not represented by Enron Corporation or its officers. By engaging in unethical behavior, Enron created an unstable corporate environment for its employees. If the leaders of a corporation behave unethically, how could employees be expected to behave ethically? Enron failed miserably in setting an ethical standard for the corporation. Ethics training could have helped Enron implement ethical standards. A third party firm or internal team made up of employees from various departments could have created the ethical standards and measured each department and employee against the ethical standards. Opening the lines of communication and showing the employees what ethical standards were...