Enron was certainly not the first corporate scandal, but neither was Hiroshima the first bomb. It's a matter of magnitude and fall out. Like a a nuclear bomb, Enron wiped out a lot of people immediately. Pensions and savings plans turned to dust. Careers vaporized.
The fall out: Arthur Anderson shut down and 28,000 employees lost their jobs. Legions of audit, accounting, finance and IT people are now rolling their eyes and driving up stock in Rolaids over Sarbanes Oxley compliance.
Move further from the Enron epi-center and you find people who no longer feel so good about working for or investing in the companies they work for. Sure employee loyalty was ebbing before Enron. The early 90's had already taught a whole generation of workers that staying in one place could spell career disaster. But with Enron, the issue of waning loyalty went deeper still. 
Who today is foolish enough to boast about their "fabulous employer?" How can anyone know the company they work for isn't headed by a pack of thieves? What about your company? If it blew up tomorrow, would anyone be naive enough to say they never saw it coming? The unfortunate aftermath of Enron, which touches everyone who works for a large corporation, is that employees can no longer feel certain that they work for an ethical company or management team, even if they do.
Photo by David J. Phillip
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Hi, Jocelyn, sounds like our country is on a downhill slide from what you share here. What would it take to turn peoples' attitudes around?
Posted by: Robyn McMaster | June 8, 2006 6:56 AM | Permalink to Comment