Bad Practices in Unternehmen und die Mechanismen ihrer Etablierung. Der Fall Enron (Bad practices in companies and their underlying mechanisms. The case of Enron)

Albert Martin, Sigrid Bekmeier-Feuerhahn, Thorsten Jochims and Ursula Weisenfeld

Zeitschrift fuer Personalforschung. German Journal of Research in Human Resource Management, 2014, vol. 28, issue 4, 454-486

Abstract: Das Management von Enron bediente sich moralisch fragwuerdiger Praktiken (‘Bad Practices’), die zu dem spektakulaeren Aufstieg und Fall des Unternehmens beitrugen. Wie konnten sich diese Bad Practices etablieren? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, betrachten wir vier Verhaltensmechanismen und veranschaulichen deren Wirksamkeit am konkreten Enron-Fall. Allerdings sind diese und aehnliche Mechanismen weit verbreitet und die an diesem Fall gewonnenen Erkenntnisse sollten sich auch fuer das Verstaendnis von Bad Practices in anderen Unternehmen als nuetzlich erweisen. Fuer unsere Analyse verwenden wir explizit die Mechanismus-Betrachtung, ein Ansatz, der selten genutzt wird, aber grosse Erklaerungskraft hat. Im Fokus stehen Manager, eine spezielle Mitarbeitergruppe mit Weisungsbefugnis, die fuer die Etablierung von Praktiken in Unternehmen letztlich die Verantwortung traegt. (The management of Enron incorporated bad practices that were partly responsible for the spectacular rise and fall of the company. How and why could these practices become established? To answer this question we examine four behavioral mechanisms and demonstrate their effect using Enron as an example. However, their presence is more widespread and the insights gained from analyzing this particular case are useful for understanding bad practices in other organizations. We focus on mechanisms, a methodological approach that has been used sparingly despite its high explanatory power. The article is concerned explicitly with managers as a social group with discretionary power. This group deserves scholarly attention when analyzing how practices become established in an organization.)

Keywords: business ethics; mechanisms; organizational wrongdoing; bad practices; management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B49 M10 M12 M14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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