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Accounting for Enron: shareholder value and stakeholder interests
Author(s) -
Clarke Thomas
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
corporate governance: an international review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.866
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1467-8683
pISSN - 0964-8410
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8683.2005.00454.x
Subject(s) - disconnection , corporate governance , shareholder value , stakeholder , accounting , business , value (mathematics) , neglect , shareholder , core (optical fiber) , phenomenon , economics , finance , political science , management , law , machine learning , computer science , medicine , materials science , physics , nursing , quantum mechanics , composite material
The catastrophe caused by the failure of Enron could not compare with the damage this company would have caused if it had succeeded. The relentless emphasis on the importance of shareholder value in recent times has created the conditions for the disconnection of corporations such as Enron from their essential moral underpinnings, encouraging them to concentrate exclusively on financial performance, and to neglect not just the wider stakeholder interests of customers and employees, but the essential interests of the economies and communities in which they operate. The problem with established economic theories of corporate governance is that they misconceive the irreducible core of corporate governance, at the same time as underestimating the complexity of the phenomenon.