Enron

Alexus Barclay

Human Resource Frame

What Happened at Enron?

Under the Human Resource Frame, it is suggested that Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay should have incorporated a more family friendly atmosphere and fostered a team oriented environment. The use of the Dog Eat Dog mentality among employees along with the introduction of a Rank than Yank program led to employees using immoral techniques and shortcuts to obtain deals in order to receive favoritism from top management. “It also encouraged desperate pragmatism. Some managers lied, altering the records of colleagues they wanted removed, others made use of Enron’s much-vaunted whistle-blowing system, to submit negative reviews against people they were competing against for rankings.” (personneltoday.com)

Lay and Skilling could have motivated their employees by using the risk taking approach but by also implementing a process of moral code and actually enforcing it. This would have fostered an environment of taking risks while also practicing proper ethics and moral practices. Standard reviews and audits of employee’s practice and details of deals made would keep ethical decision making at a high. Penalties for those who cut corners and made immoral decisions should then be implemented. Jeffrey Skilling chose to ignore how his employee made their deals, or simply adding an audit system to ensure ethical decision making. Irregular reporting and falsified statements were common at Enron. Skilling even admitted to reports being approved without through auditing for unethical behavior. " and I’m going to sit here and go through an expense statement line-item by line-item?" Henceforth, he decreed, expense reports would be routinely approved without review.” (personneltoday.com). There also was a sense for the lack of accountability in the corporation as well. If an auditing system had been implemented along with penalties for immoral misconduct, Enron and its Human Resource department could have prevented...