英国assignment代写：职业道德与治理

英国assignment代写：职业道德与治理
Professional Ethics and Governance

Executive Summary执行概要 本报告的目的是通过讨论的经典案例“安然丑闻”进行审查和评价的单位一些议题的认识和了解。通过个案研究，我们可以得到一个深层次的理解的职业道德和治理。主要内容如下：安然公司的企业文化和领导的理念，使所有员工在安然的自我感兴趣和决策。安徒生亚瑟并没有保持其业务的独立性，在其与安然公司的业务中，因为该公司一直接受来自安然的大量咨询顾问费。安然公司，曾经在纽约证券交易所挂牌上市，是美国的能源商品和服务的公司。它的前身是北方天然气公司成立于1932年，在内布拉斯加州奥马哈市。 1979年，该公司被重组为一家控股公司的主要附属在米兰是一个多元化的能源和能源相关产品的公司。其破产前，拥有约20,000名员工，声称收入在2000年连续6年约为111亿的收入，它被命名为财富“美国最具创新精神公司”

This report is intended to review and evaluate knowledge and understanding of some topics in the unit by discussing the classical case ‘Enron Scandal’. By means of case study, we can acquire a deep comprehension of Professional Ethics and Governance. The primary contents is as follows: Enron’s corporate culture and the notion from the leadership drove the self-interested decision making among all the staff at Enron. Arthur Andersen didn’t maintain its professional independence in its dealings with Enronbecause the firm was receiving large quantities of consultancy fees from Enron. According to Kohlberg’s theory of cognitive moral reasoning and development which consists of three levels, 2 stages in each level, Jeff Skilling is at stage 3 because of this Enron-centered thought, Ken Lay is at stage 2 because of this self-centered thought and Sherron Watkins is at stage 6 because of his public-centered thought.   

1.0 Introduction 简介

Enron Corporation, once listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was an American energy, commodities and services company. Its predecessor was the Northern Natural Gas Companywhich was established in 1932, in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1979,this company was reorganized as the main subsidiary of a holding company, InterNorthwhich was a diversified energy and energy related products company.  Before its bankruptcy, it owned about 20,000 employees with claimed revenues of approximately ﹩111 billion in the year 2000. For 6 consecutive years, it was named by Fortune ‘America’s Most Innovative Company’ (Wikipedia, 2014a).  Arthur Andersen, the pioneering accounting services firm was established in Chicago in 1913 by a Northwestern University professor, Arthur Andersen, and his partner called Clarence DeLany (Wikipedia, 2014c). At the beginning, it offered customers assistance with new federal income taxes and many other relative accounting issues. During the 1920s, it opened another 6 subsidiary  offices in Americaand its annual billings climbed dramatically up to ﹩2 million. Between 1947 and 1973, Andersen's client base rose from 2,300 to 50,000, and the Chicago office’s employees increased from about 250 to more than 1,500. Expansion continued in the period of the late twentieth century, as the company became more and more international and created a fast-growing management consulting division. In 1989, it separated into consulting group and accounting group andthese two units wereboth controlled by Arthur Andersen & Co., S.C. What makes Enron Corporation and Arthur Andersen famous all over the world is not only their enormous success but also the ‘Enron Scandal’ which happened on December 2, 2001. At the end of 2001, it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud. Since then, Enron has became a well-known example of willful firm fraud and corruption. The scandal also affected the greater business world by leading to the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting company.At the same time, the scandal brought the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States into question. From then, there have been a mass of researches on the causes of this event from different points of view, such as corporate culture, ethics, independence, SPE, market-to-market and so on. Despite of substantial studies on this scandal, in order to fully understand the theory of ‘Professional Ethics and Governance’, it is still necessary to discuss this event in person. This report will analyze this case by answering 3 questions and apply the knowledge of corporate governance scandals and the need to restore public trust, moral reasoning and ethical decision making, professional independence and the codes of ethics and the theories of ethics.

2.0the corporate culture at Enron and its management’s behavior 企业文化及其管理层的行为 2.1The normative theory of ethics The normative (or prescriptive) theories of ethics describe what people ought to be or what should one do by offering some theoretical underpinning as a basis for us to make decision, create and evaluate moral standards. The main reason for learning the normative theory of ethics is the complexity in business. In business we are driven by many competing forces, like the need to make profits versus the need to consider the impact of how those profits are gotten. Under this condition, The normative theory of ethics can serve as the criteria for judging the moral rightness of an action and provide a structured approach to resolving ethical dilemmas. What’s more, Awareness of a range of ethical theories provides alternative approaches to analyzinga situation with moral implications, making an ethical outcome more likely. Normative theories can be divided into 3 different categories: Consequential (teleology), Non-consequential (deontology) and Agent-centered theories. Consequential theories of ethicsdistinguish right from wrong on the basis of results of the action or decision. That means if the benefits exceed the costs, the decision is defined as morally correct. Key examples of consequential theories are Ethical Egoism and Utilitarianism, which are based on from whose perspective the consequences should be evaluated. Non-Consequential theories of ethics determinerightfrom wrong not by its consequences, but by its intrinsic value. Most known examples are rights and justice theories. Agent-centered theories focus on the kind of person we should be rather than the rules that people should follow. It was constituted by virtue ethics and ethics of care. However, every normative theory has strengthens and weaknesses and no one normative theory is superior over another one. What matters is how we can better utilize them.
2.2Definition of corporate culture and its effects  According to the March 2008 issue of “T+D” journal, corporateculture or organizational culture is defined as a type of social system that consists of groups who share similar interests, values and norms. Values and norms can be based on professional similarities, religious similarities or philosophical similarities. Corporate culture can influence many features of an organization, such as organizational behaviors. By having a cultural system that supports like-mindedstuff, it is possible for the behaviors and conduct of those employees to run the show at the company, or spread their culture out among the organization. Eventually, this can impact the firm’s appearance, image, professionalism and performance.
2.3Corporate culture and Management’s behavior at Enron In view of corporate culture and management’s behavior at Enron, we can make sure thatthe normative theory of ethics that most relevant in driving the decision making at Enronis Egoism. Related analyses are as follows: Enron has been described as having a culture of arrogance that led people to believe that they could handle increasingly greater risk without encountering any danger. According to Sherron Watkins, “Enron’s unspoken message was, ‘Make the numbers, make the numbers, make the numbers—if you steal, if you cheat, just don’t get caught. If you do, beg for a second chance, and you’ll get one.’” Enron’s corporate culture did little to promote the values of respect and integrity. These values were undermined through the company’s emphasis on decentralization, its employee performance appraisals, and its compensation program(Sims and Brinkmann, 2003).  Each Enron division and business unit was kept separate from the others, and as a result very few people in the organization had a “big picture” perspective of the company’s operations (Rockness, and Rockness,2005). Accompanying this emphasis on decentralization were insufficient operational and financial controls as well as “a distracted, hands-off chairman, a compliant board of directors, and an impotent staff of accountants, auditors, and lawyers.”  Jeff Skilling implemented a very rigorous and threatening performance evaluation process for all Enron employees. Known as “rank and yank,” the annual process utilized peer evaluations, and each of the company’s divisions was arbitrarily forced to fire the lowest ranking one-fifth of its employees. Employees frequently ranked their peers lower in order to enhance their own positions in the company.  Enron’s compensation plan “seemed oriented toward enriching executives rather than generating profits for shareholders” and encouraged people to break rules and inflate the value of contracts even though no actual cash was generated. Enron’s bonus program encouraged the use of non-standard accounting practices and the inflated valuation of deals on the company’s books. Indeed, deal inflation became widespread within the company as partnerships were created solely to hide losses and avoid the consequences of owning up to problems (Sims and Brinkmann, 2003).