Organizational Change
The corporation of Enron was an American commodities, energy and services company that is located in Houston, Texas. The CEO of Enron was Rebecca Mark until she moved to be the leader of water business that had been acquired by Enron. Rebecca Mark assumed a crucial role in developing the largest international endeavor of Enron which is the Dabhol project which is located in India. Before its demise in December 2, 2001, the corporation had an approximate of 20,000 employees and was one of the leading natural gas, electricity, communications, paper and pulp companies with revenues of about $101 billion in the year 2000.
Enron America was named as the most innovative company consecutively for six years by Fortune. Enron International comprised of Enron’s asset management and wholesale asset development businesses. Its primary goals were building and developing power plants of natural gas that would be outside North America. Engineering and Construction Company of Enron was fully owned by Enron International and had built almost all the power plants of Enron International. It is Enron International that consisted of all the foreign power projects of Enron including the ones that were in Europe. Enron International had constructed pipelines and power plants all over the globe and some are currently up and running and some of them include Teeside plant which is located in England, Plant of Puerto Plata in Dominican Republic.
In the mid of 2000, Enron had many other investments in South America, Europe, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, Jamaica and in the Caribbean. Enron had gone on to launch EnronOnline in November 1999 which was conceptualized by John Siepierski the leader of European Gas Trading team. The web-based transaction system was the first and it allowed the sellers and buyers to sell, buy and trade globally. It enabled the users to carry out their businesses with Enron only. At its peak, commodities worth more than $6 billion were transacted over EnronOnline on a daily basis. The main commodities that were offered at Enron included electricity, natural gas and 500 other commodities such as the bankruptcy swaps, credit derivatives, gas, plastics, steel, metal, freight pulp and also TV commercial time. In the 1990s, Enron had received the Prize for Distinguished Public service which had been awarded by Baker Institute of Rice University which recognized outstanding persons for their input to the public service. In the year 2002, the Harvard IgNobel Prize for Most Creative Use of Imaginary Numbers was awarded to Enron. The facts about the corporate culture of Enron is yet to be known though it now seems very apparent that the strengths and limitations exhibited in Enron’s culture had led to its demise though its not clear who knew what, who did what or whether any laws had been broken at the corporation.
Enron had praised by many people including the labor and the workforce for being a great company, it was commended for its benefits to the workers, the long term pensions, and its management that was to be extremely effective till its corporate fraud had been exposed by Daniel Scotto in August 2001 and this made most investors at Enron to sell their bonds and stocks at all and any costs. It was later realized that many recorded profits and assets of Enron had been inflated, fully fraudulent or even totally nonexistent. An example of the fraudulent records had taken place in 1999 where Enron Company had promised to pay Merrill Lynch & Company with an interest so as to show some profits on their books. Losses and debts were being put in entities that had been formed “offshore” and were not being included in Enron’s financial statements while other arcane and sophisticated transactions between the company and other related companies had been used to take entities that were not profitable off the books of Enron.
In the 2001 when revelations of irregular procedures of accounting were revealed, Enron went on to suffer the biggest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the history and had even surpassed that of the Worldcom in the year 2002 and the one of the Lehman Brothers in the year 2008. As the scandal continued, the shares of Enron dropped to just pennies from over $90 in summer 2000. This event was unprecedented in the world of finance since Enron was considered as a blue chip stock. Much of Enron revenue and profits had resulted from deals with entities which Enron had control over and that meant Enron’s losses and debts were not being included in the financial statements of the company.
As a corporate leader, I would ensure that corporate culture is made of integrity of the workers that are working for my corporation and this would be achieved at the time the employees are selected for employment and during promotions. Proper assessments and evaluations would be carried out on those to be hired and those to be promoted because if a corporation lacks integrity in the workforce, it will certainly not find it there after. I would also ensure that the corporate officers do not neglect their responsibilities or become abusive of their positions and this will help the workers to be able to report to the relevant leaders if something goes wrong. As a corporate leader, I would create a successful and sustainable corporate culture which would include values such as maximizing customer satisfaction and loyalty and also customer service that would also help in creating a sustainable profit and growth. So as to ensure that the corporation does not fall, I would ensure that the small branches of the corporation that are underperforming are paid special attention to so as to ensure improvement and if they don’t show attributes of getting back on track, they will be sold off and the resources ploughed back to the corporation to increase the profitability of the performing branches.
References
Elkind, B. M. (n.d.). The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Retrieved June 26, 2003, from Smartest Guys in the Room: http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ENRON
Fox, L. (2003). The Rise and Fall. Enron .
Peter C. Fusaro, R. M. (2002). Everyone's Guide to the Largest Bankruptcy in U.S. History. What Went Wrong at Enron .
