The Government of the United States

I have heard many US Americans complain about the Government here and its flaws. I dare you to read this post, if by the end of it, you can draw me an organization chart of the Government I am about to compare the US Government to, I shall owe you a home-cooked South Asian meal. [...]

Dwight Howard’s Top 10 Career Dunks

Number’s 1 and 2 are RIDICULOUS!

Does achieving goals mean success?

As the swim season comes to a close after six months of intense training and meets, it is time to evaluate our success. Success in swimming can be measured on a variety of levels: the number of meets won, the number of individual best times, the number of people that qualified for NCAA’s, the number [...]

When the wind blows, the house of cards will fall

Regulators say Mr. Madoff himself estimated that $50 billion in personal and institutional wealth from around the world was gone…… Even though Enron was a legitimate business, its finances were all a scam. Many of its financial workarounds were legal, but all had the intention to make assets appear on the balance sheet or debt [...]

Enron’s Population

The population of Enron was unrivaled—and maybe that was the problem. That probably doesn’t make much sense, so let me explain. From a population perspective or organizational analysis, for any given actor, whether ant or multinational corporation, the most relevant occupants of the environment are other actors of the same kind (Scott and Davis). Populations [...]

Mensalao – a product of Loose Coupling?

Mensalao- the term became a familiar one in Brazilian politics after the 2005 scandal when a congressman told the newspaper about a scheme of monthly payments to congressmen of two political parties in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars, to vote in favor of what the “Workers Party” brought to the floor. After reading about [...]

Preventing Human Nature

While reading about the debacle and collapse of Enron, I find myself constantly drawing connections between the largest bankruptcy in U.S history, and the pending doom faced by our nation’s banks. Before the U.S began to expirience an economic downturn, both Enron, and our nations banking powerhouses, such as Citigroup, both strongly resisted government regulation. [...]

Enrons Visions and Values: What are they hiding?

As I was reading about goals in Organizations and Organizing (Scott and Davis) I immediately thought of Enron. The in the above video Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling discuss what they want the public

Reading The Smartest Guys in the Room has certainly confirmed one thing: I am glad I am not headed toward a career in finance.  Assets, liabilities, balance sheets, special purpose entities; all concepts I am happy to have left behind in accounting.  Putting these terms aside, I decided to put my interest in marketing into [...]

The Enron Elixir

As I’m sure is the case with many of my fellow classmates, a lot of things just bother me when I read The Smartest Guys in the Room.  Maybe the word choice of “bother” is an understatement – let’s go with infuriate instead.   And here’s one of the main things I simply cannot get my [...]

To be Ethical, or not to be Ethical…..

What would you do in the following solution? Knowing full well that there is scientific proof that there cigarettes are lethal AND nicotine is addictive, would you work for Philip Morris (one of the largest cigarette manufacturers in the U.S.)? Just to make things interesting let’s say that you beginning salary is six figured with [...]

Ken Lay = Richard Fuld

The Enron debauchle seems very similar to the recent downfall of Lehman Brothers. This video gives a glimpse of then CEO of Lehman Brothers Richard Fuld answering questions about his excessive spending and excessive salary. Since 2000, Fuld has taken nearly $500 million dollars in Take home salary.

NASA: To Infinity and Beyond?

In an effort to write about something besides the structure of our government which seems to be 90% of all the news articles we read about, I decided to try and delve into an area I seem to have a strong opinion about, yet have absolutely no concrete knowledge of how it works. Hopefully someone [...]

Places I Don’t See Hierarchies: 1) Enron…

Our discussion in the beginning of class today about hierarchies in companies really made me question whether or not you can even apply the concept to Enron. I know that there are different types of hierarchies, but I looked up the definition just to see if I could apply it to Enron even in the [...]

Community and Rationality in Facebook

Your humble professor does his part to educate people and enhance Bucknell’s image.  Baltimore Sun Column: As Bucknell University management professor Jordi Comas puts it, “People aren’t trusting Facebook, they’re trusting the other people who use Facebook. When I see people around me using it, it gives it legitimacy and signals this is a community [...]

Fastow’s Schemes

This sums up a lot Fastow’s complicated creative financial reporting tools mentioned in the book.

Best of Feb 16-Feb 23

Announcing This Week’s Best Of… Thanks to Ross and Blaire, this week’s Blgo Council.  They also wrote our new “About Us” page. Best Overall (content and writing) Zuffola’s “Rock Bottom” Most Theoretical Using the way back machine to pull in Fayol, the award goes to Kristin’s “Enron and The Former President.” The Blogitzer (Blog + [...]

Boo! A bear! And it’s not Halloween

Please don’t kill the messenger. h/t: Calculated Risk

Big Salaries, Big Loss

Wouldn’t it be great to have your first “real” job out of college where you get to have a say in major company initiatives and along with a lot of say, you also get a huge six figure salary? That would be the life wouldn’t it?

This is the lesson that never ends…?

Are you curious to know how Enron acted after the World Trade Center Attacks on September 11, 2001? Do you want to know how Enron employees behaved in the less than 3 month time span between the attacks and its December 2, 2001 bankruptcy filing?

Skilling’s Hearing

This youtube video shows Skilling’s testifying about McMahon’s job transfer…page 210-211 in Smartest Guys in the Room

I Guess It’s Your Fault

What happeend to our economy?  Why are we in a recession and facing massive structural problems in the financial sector?  If Wall Street is mortally wounded, or already six feet under, who has blood on her hands? I guess it is you…at least according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett. When Wall Street was [...]

Torture and American Values

There is a talk next week that I encourage you to attend.  Feel free to blog about it if you like. LEWISBURG, Pa. — Gitanjali Gutierrez, a 1992 graduate of Bucknell University who is serving as counsel for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, will give the talk, “Torture, Guantanamo and American Values,” on [...]

Concepts: Chapter 5

Inter-organizational Community and Organizational Fields.

Concepts: Chapter 4

Synergy and Enactment.