Using the Five Fabrications from the Article Beyond Selfishness as a Template, Explain the Decline and Fall of Enron

Using the five fabrications from the article Beyond Selfishness as a template, explain the decline and fall of Enron

William Jennings Bryan once said, “No one can earn a million dollars honestly.”  This quote pretty much summarizes Enron in a nutshell.  What exactly caused the downfall of Enron?  Was it the quest for power in the business world, greed for money?  How does this fall under the five fabrications of Beyond Selfishness?

Starting with the first fabrication, We are all, in essence, Economic Man. Enron was a corporation that prided itself in the profitability of their investments.  The corporation was “willing to sacrifice a little of almost anything we care to name, even reputation or morality, for a sufficiently large quantity of other desired things.,, ."^[1]  During the period that the stock market started shooting upward, Enron became a company fixated on profitability.  The higher the share earnings that were made, the more the corporation wanted their part.  Profit was the word that became all that was important and was all that mattered.

Second Fabrication: Corporations Exist To Maximize Shareholder Value.  Let’s face it, profitability does not correlate with maximizing the shareholder value.  Holding the best interest of the shareholders definitely was not what was on the mind of the Enron corporation.  Making money to line their pockets is what was on their mind.  They did not see the anything past that.  Their interests lie in making the money for themselves, or becoming the second wealthiest Colorado landowner and marrying strippers.  

Third Fabrication: Corporations Require Heroic Leaders:  To hold the Enron leaders to a high standard was maybe something of a fairy tale.  “But how could these chief executives, flesh-and-blood human beings like everyone else, deliver on such inflated expectations?”^[2]  Enron’s leaders were men of flesh and blood.  Money, power and greed can sway such a person, no matter how strong and ethical the person may be.  The strength of the corporation began to crumble with the corruption of its’ leaders.