There is much about the Enron scandal that feels of its moment—but not everything does. A culture of celebrity surrounding business leaders is arguably deeper entrenched today than in 2001, when Enron filed for bankruptcy. And, as recent scandals like Theranos demonstrate, Enron wasn’t the last fall from grace to capture the public’s imagination. This episode looks back on Enron, Tyco and Worldcom to consider what has and has not changed since those scandals. Its focus is on their aftermath: efforts in Congress and in academia to change business conduct for the better. What have we learned about how to stop companies from going bad?
Episode Notes
Guests
Rick Wartzman, Doug Chia, Mary Gentile
Host
Michelle Harven
Writing and Production
Written by Keith Schumann with input from T.A. Frank, Miguel Padró, Felicia Davis, and the Business & Society Team.
Recorded by Ben Eyler and edited by Jesse Krinsky.
The Business & Society team wishes to thank the audio technicians and everyone involved in the production of this episode, including:
Music Samples Featured in this Episode
Algorithms by Chad Crouch (Excerpted form of the track; used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Dark Alleys by Kai Engel (Excerpted form of the track) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Infiltration by Room Of Wires (Excerpted form of the track) Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
The Stork by Ketsa (Excerpted form of the track) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Tobacco Road – Storyblocks Audio