Resisting Corporate Corruption: Cases in Practical Ethics From Enron Through The Financial Crisis, 2nd Edition

Taking a unique approach to business ethics unlike the typical focus on conceptual/legal frameworks, this book features 25 case studies that cover a full range of business practices, controls, and ethics issues. The new edition is fully updated with new case studies from the recent financial crisis, comparing it with Enron's crossing of various ethical lines. Interpretive essays explore financial control systems and lessons learned from specific case studies and circumstances. Readers will find a practical toolkit they can use to identify ethics issues and tackle problems effectively within corporations.

Presents real-world case studies exploring the complex challenges that cause ethical failures and the means available to overcome them with integrity.

Resisting Corporate Corruption teaches business ethics in a manner very different from the conceptual and legal frameworks that dominate graduate schools. The book offers twenty-seven case studies and eleven essays that cover a full range of business practice, controls, and ethics issues. The cases are framed to instruct students in early identification of ethics issues, and how to work such problems effectively within corporate organizations. By pursuing these case studies, students should emerge with a practical toolkit that better enables them to follow their moral compass. The cases provide examples of how executives can embed more ethical approaches inside alternative business strategies, redirect pressure and intimidation to parties better positioned to resist, and use the firm's controls structure to counteract corrupt practices. Specific cases take up the circumstances of whistleblowers and the changing protections afforded by recent laws. Fourteen case studies examine Enron's crossing of various ethical lines from 1987–2001. Thirteen new cases examine key financial crisis moments at Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Moody's, Lehman Brothers, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Interpretive essays discuss the nature of sound financial controls systems and the extent to which the financial crisis shows Enron's issues to be unresolved.

Changes made to the Second Edition

The first edition was published in 2008 and consisted of Enron case studies only. The Second Edition has fewer Enron case studies and includes new financial case studies. Moreover, the lessons learnt, or not learnt, from Enron as well as post-Enron regulations, can be scrutinized as to what effect, if any, they had on the unfolding of the Great Recession.

Readership

• Corporate heads of audit, controllers, and legal compliance officers
• Business leaders, especially those heading financial and large corporations
• Seminaries and other institutions offering business ethics courses
• Law schools and those doing Continuing Legal Education (CLE)
• Business schools and MBA students, especially those with finance concentration