Ethical Leadership in Corporate America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6500 words

Ethical Leadership in Corporate America - Essay Example United States possesses anti-fraud regulations that can execute the offenders in the courts of law as criminals of the society. But significant number of fraudulent activities happen in the United States erasing hundreds of billions of dollars of government treasury and public money every year. The Enron fraud revealed the huge extent of involvement of corporate executives in illegal market manipulations and tampering of financial books & balance sheets that can shake the fundamentals of US economy and in turn the global economy. [Ostas. 2007. p.571-578] Enron fraud was a significant event in the history that resulted in a mammoth decline of about $1.5 Trillion in the New York Stock Exchange alone within an year of their public disclosures which eroded the confidence of the general investors significantly in the United States and rest of world [Ostas. 2007. p.571-578]. This was one of the most rude shocks to the world about a country where ethical conduct is taught as dedicated management subject and Jesuit tradition of education is followed in so many universities. Is America developing bad managers at the academic level or the work environment in the corporations erases their fundamental learning of ethics that they bring from the academic world This is a question that is not easy to answer but the people of United States and from all across the world have begin to wonder if the corporations of the United States are in the hands of managers that are incapable and selfish that possess very poor self restraint and self reliance and poor (or NIL) dignity towards the nation and its people. In this article, I present a review of the impact of leadership values and ethics within Corporate America taking the events in Enron as the baseline. The article begins with an analysis of the events in Enron and their mapping with the empirical theories of corporate ethics. Further to this, the alternatives are discussed that management in Enron should have considered to prevent this fraud and the most appropriate alternative is discussed in detail along with its implementation plan. Table of Contents: 1.1 Background of the Enron Scandal 7 1.1.1 What was the ENRON scandal 7 1.1.2 Brief summary of the issue 9 1.1.3 Sarbanes - Oxley Act and other major changes post Enron Scandal 10 1.1.4 The Problem Statement 12 2.1 Amazing rise of Enron and its fall thereafter 13 2.2 Where did Enron lacked in Corporate Ethics 15 2.3 Linking Enron and the Corporate America with the empirical theories of corporate ethics 18 Table of Figures: S.No. Description and Hyperlink in the document Figure 1 The mapping of IT enabled Corporate Governance with the corresponding attributes (Source: IT Governance Institute. 2000) Figure 2 The extremely complex transactional framework created by Enron to sell their SPEs (Source: Jenson, Bob. at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory/00overview/speoverview.htm) Figure 3 The Critical Thinking Model (Source: Paul and Elder. 2006. p.3-21) Figure 4 The decision making process that develops the individual traits helping in being more