Immorality in Enron

Immorality In Enron

When it comes to immorality in the business world of today many people look at Nike or other clothing manufacturing companies that have moved there manufacturing factories out of the United States and moved them into third world countries such as Asia or South America. While this can be considered immoral for different reasons when you look at it from a standpoint of utility the company is doing the right thing. Though it does not sound it the company is doing it to increase there profitability which is in there right as a business to do this they are also helping out a third world country. They are providing jobs for people that live in over populated areas and where jobs are not easy to be found. Many of these peoples families and lives revolve around this manufacturing plant though what may be unethical about this is that the companies are paying these employees next to nothing to run these factories.

An overlooked aspect of immorality or maybe not even overlooked but one that was able to be kept under wraps because the people involved with this immorality had the resources (money, and knowledge) to have it this way. This is immorality was made blatantly clear when Enron Corporation was exposed for its improper accounting practices that lead to the companies bankruptcy, lost of pension plans, and finical stability of the companies employees who had no idea of what the company was doing with their stocks. The key players in the insider trading scandal that lead to the collapse of Enron were Kenneth Lay, and Jeff Skilling. Kenneth Lay who was the founder of Enron and Skilling all denied that they had any knowledge of what was going on with there company or that they had any involvement with it. They are not the only ones who were acting immoral the auditing agency that the company used to do its accounting had knowledge of the companies cover up and they continued to support the company and not report any of this. Until the company disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that they were going to post a record six hundred and thirty-eight million dollar third quarter loss. When they had just posted a five hundred and eighty million dollar profit just a few years before this prompted the SEC to investigate the company.

The business ethics that Enron showed were very immorally looking at it from all aspects of utility, rights, and justice. What Enron and Arthur Andersons auditing firm did was cover up their losses on their statements that were publicly released to since Enron was publicly traded company. By, doing this the company was able to deceive buyers of the stock of the actual worth of the stock and would continue to take the hug debits that they had off of the record books. They did this to try and bring in more money to the company even though they were posting losses year after year. They were also hiding this information so that they could continue to borrow money from creditors so that they could attempt to run their business. This is just the beginning of the company’s deceit to its 20,000 employees. Enron barred them from selling Enron shares from their retirement accounts last fall as the stock price plunged, saying the accounts were being switched to a new plan administrator. Many longtime employees, including those who worked for energy and utility companies that Enron acquired, had their life savings wiped out. By doing this the companies head executives were able to make a profit of selling there stocks with nearly 600 employees deemed critical to Enron's operations