Culture Of An Organization

Culture Of An Organization

Culture Of An Organisation

Introduction

On the eve of its bankruptcy in 2001, Enron declared its intention to become the world's leading company. At that stage, by some measures of turnover, it was the seventh largest company in the US (Gordon, 2002) and was at one point valued at $70 billion by the stock exchange (Steiger, 2002). Thus, the scale of its ambition had some credibility. But its demise may instead ensure that its fate is to become the most analyzed case study of failure in business history. Myriad analyses have now been published, outlining its trading practices (Steiger, 2002), exploring the implications for the communication aspects of business ethics (May and Zorn, 2003) and ethics more generally (Peppas, 2003), its likely impact on business education (Dean, 2003), the challenges posed for the accounting profession (e.g. Semple, 2002; Copeland, 2003; Holt and Eccles, 2003; Tinker, 2003), implications for the role of non-executive directors (Peaker, 2003) and the role more generally of corporate governance (Vinten, 2002; Weidenbaum, 2002). Trust in visionary leaders is among the most immediate casualties of the Enron debacle (Kendall, 2002). More widely, it has resulted in a crisis of confidence in corporations (Jenkins, 2003). This paper does not recapitulate the now familiar story of its meteoric rise and spectacular fall. Rather, it addresses a major gap that remains in the literature. In particular, while it has been noted that the Enron scandal highlights 'a recurring communication dysfunction within the organizational structure of the corporation itself' (Cohan, 2002, p.276), relatively little attention has been focused on what the culture of the organization demonstrates about the dark side of charismatic leadership. Thus, although The Economist suggested in June 2000 that Enron could be viewed as 'some sort of evangelical cult' (Sherman, 2002, p.25), the idea has not been systematically explored in the academic literature. This paper therefore discusses the nature of cults and cultic leadership, and explores the extent to which the role of Enron's leaders was consistent or otherwise with the characteristics identified. Finally, the discussion is located in the context of the changing roles of CEOs more generally, and the extent to which what can be defined as corporate cultism is becoming a more common characteristic of organizational life. This paper draws on the academic literature on the cultic phenomenon, which has, however, rarely been applied to the corporate world. Information on Enron is derived from the vast archive of material now published on the organization - in particular, on the key accounts of former employees, as exemplified by Curve (2003), Swartz and Watkins (2003) and Watkins (2003a.b.). Other accounts have proliferated in the mass media and business press, and are broadly consistent with the sources highlighted in this analysis. Organizations can be viewed as narrative spaces, in which stories and accounts are employed by all participants to facilitate the process of sense making (Gabriel, 2004). It is therefore useful to examine the narrative structures developed by for mar Enron employees, to ...