Chief Executive Officers Compensation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Chief Executive Officers Compensation - Essay Example The term human resource management is not new. It has been widely used by scholars and managers to refer to the set of policies designed to maximize organizational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work4. In the sections that follow, I will attempt each of the questions as requested and there after I will provide a brief conclusion. In economic literature, the significance of information asymmetries, innovation and strategic behaviour has long been recognised. There exists a considerable literature on how incentives affect a variety of management problems and the methodology for analysis of incentive problems most notably the principal agent model (Turner and Muller 2006). CEOs are paid based on the job description given to them and since in America it is often believe that, they are the leaders they want others to emulate. In addition, it always costs more to hire a new person than keep the old one. Osborne, Hyman & Jack (2006:451) substantiate further that an effective human resource policy "is not only to find competent workers but also to motivate and effectively manage them, is recognised as important for the viability of the organisation". They argued th They argued that, problems emanating from conflict of interest are virtually general to all cooperative activities amongst individuals whether or not they occur in a hierarchical fashion as suggested by the principal agent analogy Because principal and agents are utility maximisers, there is every reason to believe that the agent will not always act in the best interest of the principal (Jensen 2003:86). This attempts to draw out contractual problems that can arise as a result of agents acting opportunistically when their interest departs from those of their principal (Jensen 2003). Thus, agency theory provides us with the rational for an effective human resource management policy. Thus, if American CEOs are paid more than their Japanese counterpart, it is just their own way to handle the opportunistic behaviour of the agent. Hyman & Jack stated that Corporations in the States save twice that much every year from an even more outrageous loophole, what executive excess 2008 dubs the "unlimited tax deductibility of executive pay." Top companies can essentially

MOVEO folding electric scooter Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

MOVEO folding electric scooter - Essay Example 2013). When folded, the scooter assumes a shape not bigger than a suitcase and this makes it easy to even be transported by cars. The main objective of designing this scooter is to ensure that we have environmental friendly operating mode of transport that is affordable (Monika 2013). The core material used in manufacturing of this scooter is carbon fiber build with an organic shape design (Monika 2013). When it comes to technicality, the Moveo scooter can manage speed limit of 35 to 45 km/h since it has an in-build electrical motor with wheels with a battery that lasts over a distance of 35 km (Monika 2013). Notable to mention is the fact that the scooter takes only one hour of charging (Monika. 2013). With this information and after the piloting success, this Hungarian company scheduled for mass production to commence in the year 2014. The costing price for the scooter will be $2000 for the first year with likelihood of prices reducing in the subsequent years (Monika 2013). It is for the above stated objectives that the Antro Group Company required a marketing communication plan for 12 months which will aid in marketing and thereafter selling of the electric scooters (Monika 2013). The marketing plan should incorporate marketing communication strategies and budget of not more than $5 million which is meant to facilitate the entire marketing process (Monika 2013). It should be noted that a successful marketing communication plan is one which integrates all marketing activities (Luther 1992). These are activities that relates to one another within the company’s departments which aims at surrounding the consumer without them knowing that they are being inundated with the conveyed message (Luther 1992). To this effect, the marketing communication plan must serve as the initial foundation of the business marketing plan (Luther 1992). Our vision as Antro Group Company is to provide to the people with alternative affordable mode of transport that

Study on the Industrial Abandoned Lands

Study on the Industrial Abandoned Lands Industrial abandoned lands, ruins, eyesores, voids, derelict, urban deserts, dead zones, silent spaces, landscapes of contempt, and squats are just a few of the words that have been used to figure out the fragments of transformation within our urban spaces. They are terms that refer to spaces such as post-industrial landscapes, abandoned environments, and empty spaces in the peripheral parts of a city. Linked to the processes of decay, the terms also refer to the cultural entropy and social of our city spaces, their loss and ruin. By virtue of their neglect, ruinous state, and marginal place in the urban landscape, recent architectural and urban planning discourse has defined these spaces as contingent, interstitial, and spaces of indeterminacy. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, many cities have witnessed the unused of significant industrial landscapes and their eventual abandonment. Urban societies, cultural and architectural history, these landscapes of indetermi nacy remain a part of the urban palimpsest. Using the metaphor of city as palimpsest and extending the notion of indeterminate spaces. It is explored the nature of contemporary city phenomena in relation to the transformation of abandoned urban spaces. Since the fall of the Nazis colonization, Oswiecim has struggled with using former factories. Under Communist force, the citys main employer, who a chemical worker, failed to develop continue with modern technology, and since 1989 over 10,000 work places have been lost at the plant. With seemingly no other choice to cultivating a grizzly tourist trade, Oswiecim is finding its past increasingly difficult to escape. In other words, Oswiecim is urban decay city falls into irrecoverable and aged, with falling population or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, separated families, and inhospitable city landscape where whole city area as fragments which is contained city memories and space qualities. trauma and discontinuity are fundamental for memory and history, ruins have come to be necessary for linking creativity to the experience of loss at the individual and collective level. Ruins operate as powerful metaphors for absence or rejection, and hence, as incentives for reflection or restoration.[3] Decay Industrial ruins are an intersection of the visible and the invisible, for the people who managed them, worked in them, and inhabited them are not there. And yet their absence manifests itself as a presence through the shreds and silent things that remain, in the objects we half recognize or surround with imaginings. In ruins we can identify that which appeared to be not there, a host of signs and traces which let us know that a haunting is taking place. The ghosts of ruins do not creep out of shady places unannounced, as they do in highly regulated urban spaces, but are abundant in the signs which haunt the present in such a way as to suddenly animate the past. Rather than being exorcised through redevelopment, these ghosts are able to haunt us because they are part of an unfinished disposal of spaces and matter, identified as rubbish but not yet cleared. Such things suddenly become animated, when the over and done with comes alive the things you partly recognize or have heard about provoke familiar feelings, an imaginative and empathetic recouping of the characters, forms of communication, and activities of factory space. In these haunted peripheries, ghosts rarely provoke memories of the epochal and the iconic but recollect the mundane passage of everyday factory life. The past isnt dead. It isnt even past.[4] The decay resides at the conceptual intersection of the individual parts of the analogy that zone created by the superimposition and superposition of essentially translucent entities. The active light of interpretation shines through these layers, as it were, illuminating significant shapes and figures. Meaning actively happens here; it is constructed as images overlap each other, aligning themselves momentarily, and then shifting slightly, encouraging reevaluation and reinterpretation. As a layered figure of depth in architecture, complexity occurs in both plan and section. As a site, the zone of meaning in the analogical system is often ambiguous. Yet, also as a site, this area has boundaries or, rather, a set largely unquantifiable of all available meanings, which is different than a boundless field of all-inclusiveness or unregulated interpretations. Trace and Time Layers with Derridas Theory The resonance of a knock on a door uncovers its density. The tactile of a wall describes its materiality. The texture of a floor may invite us to sit or lay down. The smoothness of a handrail comforts our ascent. Human skin is a powerful material that enables us to perceive and understand our surroundings. Skin is highly expressive; based on its color, texture, wear and plasticity we can read it, gathering information concerning culture, ethnic background, age, abuse, health and the tasks it performs on specific body parts. Skin itself reads as it is readable. Our skin can gather data through tactile perception and read our spatial surroundings. Architecture is an expressive act and the only discipline that stimulates all of our senses. An architect designs spaces that foresee and celebrate the bodily interaction of the inhabitant. According to Derrida, phenomenology is metaphysics of presence because it unwittingly relies upon the notion of an indivisible self-presence, or in the case of Husserl, the possibility of an exact internal adequacy with oneself. In various texts, Derrida contests this valorisation of an undivided subjectivity, as well as the primacy that such a position accords to the now, or to some other kind of temporal immediacy. For instance, in Speech and Phenomena, Derrida argues that if a now moment is conceived of as exhausting itself in that experience, it could not actually be experienced, for there would be nothing to juxtapose itself against in order to illuminate that very now. Instead, Derrida wants to reveal that every so-called present, or now point, is always already compromised by a trace, or a residue of a previous experience, that precludes us ever being in a self-contained now moment. Memory Whenever I distrust my memory, writes Freud in a note of 1925. I can resort to pen and paper. Pater then becomes an external part of my memory and retains something which I would otherwise carry about with me invisibly. When I write on a sheet of paper, I am sure that I have an enduring remembrance, safe from the possible distortions to which it might have been subjected in my actual memory. The disadvantage is that I cannot undo my note when it is no longer needed and that the page becomes full. The writing surface is used up. Memory-autobiographical and collective, each integral to the other-exists as the foundation upon which meaning is built. Memory affords our connection to the world. Every aspect of experience becomes enveloped in the process of memory. It forms our identity as individuals and it coheres individuals together to form the identity of social groups. Memory is also the thread which links the lived-in now with the past and the future: what I remember of my past cont ributes to who I am now (at this very moment) and in many ways affects what I will do in the future. Without memory, meaning building cannot happen.[5] Memory of architecture, therefore, seems to depend more on our ability to perceive the embodied situation. Moreover those situations are subject to particular catalytic moments in time-those instances in which the energies of both the container and the contained become virtually indistinguishable. The timing of those moments is uneven, poetic, and anisotropic. It would be impossible for the constituent elements of a place memory to sustain a constant equilibrium or frequency of resonance in time. It needs to be emphasised that remembering is a thoroughly social and political process, a realm of contestation and controversy. The past is constantly selected, filtered and restructured in terms set by the questions and necessities of the present. Memories are selected and interpreted on the basis of culturally located knowledge and this is further constituted and stabilised within a network of social relationships, consolidated in the `common sense of the everyday. Although practices of inscribing memory on space are enormously varied, there are undoubtedly tendencies to fix authoritative meanings about the past through an ensemble of practices and technologies which centre upon the production of specific spaces, here identified as monumental `memory-scapes, heritage districts, and museums. It is within the contingent spaces of the city where ephemeral gestures resonate, drawing our attention to the residue of the past, enticing us to rediscover their temporal value. And for me at least, ruins, like palimpsests, are traces by which we discover our urban history, and the soul of a space. As all historical narratives are subjectively woven Tapestries of pieced historical facts and events, new Histories often reveal striking discrepancies in the linear conventions of previously inscribed histories. The intention here is to piece together discrepant theoretical notions, to produce an archaeological investigation, which is consistent with the theoretical and ideological approach of Aldo Rossi. The most evocative works of Aldo Rossi are exemplary of the process of building meaning as we engage memory in our everyday experiences, thinking analogically and understanding the world tacitly by doing and making. Whether stated explicitly or not, Rossi must have sensed the necessity to temper his early polemics about a theory of design with a commitment to architecture of intense poetry, of non-quantifiable artistry, and an architecture conscious of its autobiographical significance. Underlying the rationalist tendencies of Rossis theoretical ork is a deeply felt reverence for the power of memory, both his own as well as the collective memory of a particular culture or society that is embodied in key architectural types. And the force of memory permeates his entire oeuvre to such an extent that it is almost pathological, or cultish, or verging on nostalgia, to say the least. For Rossi, the process of memory analogically suggests the evolution and morphology of the physical form of the city; and a formal language based on a typology of architecture; and, as a matter of necessity, the repetitive, obsessive, and dynamic nature of his own creative practice. However, Rossis poetic was not as self-absorbed as it may seem-or, at least, it was not ultimately meant to turn in on itself in the creation of a restrictive, self-indulgent reverie. He expected his obsession with memory to translate into his buildings in such a way that it would invigorate architecture with a new liberty, a freedom of experience and meaning similar to so many of those buildings he had discovered and cited in his early treatise, The Architecture of the City: the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, the Roman amphitheater-turned-market square in Lucca, the tiny fishing huts along the Po River valley-buildings that, while displaying characteristics of specific types, transcended the program of those types by accommodating changing activities and uses. By analogically relating the transposition of a rchitectural types with the process of memory, Rossi was privileging meaning building with his architecture as an integral part of the built environment, especially as it governed the evolution of cities. It is how Rossi engaged the profound memories of his past. It is how he anticipated people would live with and within his buildings, seeing in those forms their own memories of an architectural past, encouraging them to reactivate those connections, those relationships in his buildings. The emergence of relations among things, more than the things themselves, always gives rise to new meanings, wrote Rossi. Perhaps, like this: Confront the built form-it reminds you of other buildings and other experiences you have had before-this new building feels familiar and established in your understanding of the given-yet, you experience this building as something different, its meaning has changed from what you thought it should be because of the change in how you use the architecture-the given is expanded, enriched with new meaning meaning building. It is how Rossi practiced architecture-by working analogically from drawings to buildings to writings, discovering relationships, exploring the sp ace where meaning happens, in between those things which can be explicitly articulated, patently expressed. Sampling to make music, people need sounds and when people cant make them yourself you find them somewhere else: in appearance there is nothing more simple.The sampler is an electronic memory that is virtually infinite, which enables sounds to be stored, from a single note to a symphony. This fund constitutes a sort of personal library, where works are reduced to an anthology of chosen pieces drawn flora the vast reservoir of musical culture. The work ceases to function as a closed opus or a melody and becomes a sum of harmonies and pre existing sounds. The sampler is thus the centre of sound memory, a centre where all metamorphoses are possible. It is an abstract place where all the sounds of the world are classified and subjected to changes. This tool simplifies the work of the DJ, who then needs only to physically manipulate the vinyl records in order to modify sounds, slowing them down, warping them or passing them into a loop. These manipulations are necessary to the construction of a du rable rhythm by the mixing of short breaks. The re-appropriation of knowledge has always been pre sent in human activity, in different forms, but the advent of the sampler has upset the pre existing metaphysical relationship between creation and memory. Indeed, by faithfully retrieving recorded pieces ready to be recombined, the memory no longer works as a catalyst. The combined effect of the dormant memory/recall binomial implements internal re-composition, a metabolism that plays on memory by default. But the sampler, on the contrary, pushes the process of fabrication to the surface, turning it into a conscious act, like collage, thus relating it to an aesthetic of superposition, medley and fusion. References Leatherbarrow. D, Mostafavi. M, Surface Architecture Skin+Bones ; Parallel Practieces in Fashion and Architecture, Thames Hudson, London, 2007 McLuhan. M, Understanding Media; The Extensions of Man, 2002 Bru E, New Territories New Landscapes, ACTAR, 1997 Herausgeber, Atlas of Shrinking Cities, HATJE CANTZ, 2004 Juhani. P, The eyes of the skin; architecture and the senses, London:Academy Editions,1996 Morphosis, Architecture and Urbanism, A+U, 1994 This quote was taken from Walter Benjamins Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century, cited in Sexuality and Space, ed. Beatrize Colomina (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992) 74. Matthew Goulash, 39 Micro Lectures in Proximity of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 2000) 190. Salvator Settis, forward, Irresistable Decay: Ruins Reclaimed, by Michael S. Roth (Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1997) vii. William Faulkner making meaning out of the memory of architecture

Thos Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49 - Her Errand Into the Wilderness :: Crying Lot 49 Essays

The Crying of Lot 49: Her Errand Into the Wilderness One of the central themes touched upon in Pierre-Yves Petillon's Essay, "A Re-cognition of Her Errand Into the Wilderness," is the general sense of awakening one feels when he reads Thos Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Petillon begins his essay by expressing the opinion that "it is rather odd that The Crying of Lot 49, a slim novella should have become an overnight classic (O'Donnell, p.127)." What at first seemed like a typical piece expounding the virtues of LSD, turned out to have much more under the surface than a first reading would reveal. "Here was another 'groovy' sample of the emergent psychedelic scene: om, sweet om, O(edipa) M(ass) and her Lonely Hearts Club Band (O'Donnell, p. 128)." Petillon touches upon the book's power beautifully by realizing that "its 'mood' grows upon you with each reading (O'Donnell, p. 129)." Born in the Late 1930's, Thomas Pynchon "came of age during 'the Eisenhower Siesta,' when everything had, it seemed, slowed to a sudden standstill (O'Donnell, p. 135)." Petillon then relates Lot 49 to Jack Kerouacs On The Road, by telling of their simultaneous "sense of 'blooming,' as if awakening from a long sleep (O'Donnell, p. 130)." He also points out that both Kerouac's and Pynchon's main characters (Kerouac's being himself, and Pynchon's being Oedipa Maas), both move further and further into an "invisible, hidden America (O'Donnell, p. 130)." I believe the one thing Petillon has failed to mention adequately, though, is the fact that the reader never gets a sense of their surroundings. When awakening from a long sleep, one usually ends up with a general awareness and clarity as to what is going on around him. However, with The Crying of Lot 49, you come to end of the story, or the end of the awakening if you will, only to find that you have slipped further into a dream.

Why L.A. Used as Setting for Most Disaster Movies.

HENOS WOLDE Instructor: STARR GOODE English 1 Essay 3 10/29/2012 Why L. A. used as setting for most disaster movies. Through decades of disaster films, Los Angeles has been targeted by aliens, toppled by temblors, sunken by tsunamis, leveled by lava, and a rogue tornado once took out the Hollywood sign. Even though in real life los angels is not such a disastrous it nonetheless faces constant destruction in movies, on television, and in books; in the collective imagination, the city burns and burns.Los angels is used as a setting for most disastrous movies because the city is home to Hollywood and the movie business, so the artists who write about, direct and execute mass destruction in Los Angeles are often intimately familiar with the territory and find it convenient to destroy los angels in their films. Los Angeles is a popular disaster movie locale because it is home of the entertainment capital of the world Hollywood, its famous landmarks, and its geography. Los Angeles is home to the entertainment capital of the world Hollywood, which explains why L. A. is often used as a setting for most disaster movies.To destroy a big city in movies takes a lot of time and work. It would make it even harder to travel far away to shoot these movies. To make the destruction look realistic, Hollywood movie makers have to work extra hard and film non stop making sure they get every little detail right. It would make it very challenging to film these movies far away from the studio. For these reason Hollywood apparently wants to destroy all of Los Angeles. For example, the city is going down in flames in DEMOLITION MAN, turned into an island in ESCAPE FROM L. A. , and obliterated in THE BIG ONE: THE GREAT LOS ANGELES EARTHQUAKE.Perhaps Hollywood has no particular malice toward Los Angeles but simply destroys it cinematically because â€Å"it’s there,† at hand, nearby, easy to drive to and blow up, burn down, and shake apart while the cameras roll. With these d isaster movies Hollywood has perfected the cinema of conspicuous destruction, certainly a defining aspect of American movie technology. Los Angeles is also a city filled with internationally recognized landmarks. The Hollywood sign, the Capitol Records building, City Hall and the skyscrapers of down town makes the movies convenient for cinematic shorthand.Almost everybody recognizes these landmarks and when they see it being destroyed in movies, it allows the scale of the disaster to strike the audience greatly. By far, L. A. ‘s biggest cinematic target is the famous nine-letter landmark perched in the Hollywood hills. When people see the Hollywood sign being destroyed by natural disaster or alien attack, the idea behind it is to exaggerates the power of the destruction and to shock viewers with a realistic image of these familiar monument’s falling apart. Apart from its landmarks, L. A. s a popular disaster-movie locale because of its geography. Sitting in a seismic zo ne on the western edge of the continent, it is surrounded by beaches, mountains and deserts. In real life, the city is subject to floods, fires, earthquakes and big waves, so seeing freeways collapse or Santa Monica swallowed up by the sea isn't such a stretch. Hollywood takes great advantage of these landmarks to destroy Los Angeles. Some People also love watching Los Angeles get destroyed because they believe It's nice to mess up the great weather and see it being destroyed by natural disasters.But regardless of the on screen devastation, Fire, earthquakes, floods, volcanos, and a few alien invasions have destroyed the City of Los Angeles. Even though 1000's of disastrous movies have been made in the City, these movies have made the City a Famous landmark. Ultimately, heaving destruction on Los Angeles also shows Hollywood's sense of humor and optimism. It's an odd kind of Western optimism where Los Angeles always seems to start over again, like a phoenix rising from its own destr uction.Los angeles also makes it easier for Hollywood actors to destroy it because of its geography and world wide recognized landmarks. L. A. is good at playing itself in film. It's a familiar face and it is always expected to get blown up and somehow miraculously reappear in the next summer blockbuster. Interestingly, there are always a few survivors in these films, along with a message of hope. Even thought Los Angeles is used as a setting of disaster in most of its movies, there's always hope for change and resurrection as well.

Enron And The Decision Making Factor Essay

Introduction – Students, analysts and critics of modern business practice will always consider the colossal Enron collapse as an important text book case about how a lot of different things inside the company can trigger a nearly overnight downfall of a once prestigious company. If there was any Cinderella story in the world of blue chip trading and high portfolio business, Enron was the ultimate opposite, if not the witch herself who was killed by her own lethal potion. The Enron collapse resulted in the formulating of many different opinions pointing to the many different possible reasons why Enron – with all the promise and potential that it has a few years before it went south – made the nosedive that made it one of the worst disasters in the history of trade, commerce and business. There is no doubt that most of the opinions that surfaced explaining the reason why such an eventuality befell Enron placed the blame on the wrong things that the top management echelon did for the company; they are after all the one which is responsible for the present and the future of Enron. Critics looking at the Enron debacle scrutinized what happened leading to the collapse using many different perspectives and considering many different factors, both in the professional capability of the company’s leaders as well as the impact of the surrounding factors beyond Enron’s control. One of the most important facets in the debate regarding the fall of Enron is decision making. Evidently, a lot of wrong decisions were made, with one every wrong decision acting as a building block that eventually became an insurmountable wall of consequences all borne out of wrong or faulty decision making processes that yielded results that did the company more harm than good. Indeed, the decision making linchpins significant to the establishment of the case that the Enron collapse was due in some extent to the decision making aspect of the leadership strata of the company can be identified easily as it is scattered throughout the timeline of Enron’s very near and not so distant past leading to the eventual fall of the company that hid behind the facade of the building the ugliness created by the qualities of its leaders that caused the chaos that burned down Enron down to meager, worthless ashes. This paper will pick the significant moments wherein the decision making capabilities and abilities of its top management leaders were at play and use these moments to establish the ethical and other considerations coming to play during the analysis of the decision making efforts of the leaders and why the outcome of such exercises led to the fall of Enron and not towards the company’s betterment, which is the main task of the company’s top executives. The paper will utilize these occasions to stress its argument regarding the role of effective, ethical and sound decision making of top executives leading to either the success or bankruptcy of companies, in this case that of Enron, and discuss key aspects of this line of thought. The paper will not criminalize the actions of the executives of Enron; rather, it will infuse inputs from other professionals regarding important aspects in the discussion of corporate decision making (ethics, result-orientation, etc). Background – Various angles have already been explored by many different individuals every time the topic of analysis is Enron and its collapse. Because of this, the paper is moving to focus on an aspect that is focused more on Kenneth Lay and the rest of his top executive clique’s personal characteristic that could have played an important role in the outcome of Enron’s operation. Decision making is both a personal characteristic as it is a professional credential, even an asset. Some people are being paid handsome amounts of money for their ability to transform decision making moments into an opportunity that provides a positive result and expected outcome for the company. Ehringer (1995) puts it simply: ‘The ability to make good decisions is the defining quality of our lives’ (Ehringer, 1995, p. 1). When Lay, Skilling, Fastow and other Enron bosses were placed in their respective positions, they were expected to exercise a high level of intuitiveness, business acumen and professional foresight so that every decision making opportunity is met with the company’s best interest long term and short term in mind. They were where they were because those who placed them there believed that they can make decisions to which the company can benefit from. When Enron collapse, many people and organizations criticized the questioned the decision making capabilities of the top executives – was the collapse an effect of the result of the decision that they made? Was the decision made putting the benefit of the company and the employees first, or are the decisions shaped so that it benefited them first? How bad was the breach in the ethical considerations that a professional should take every time he or she makes a decision that puts the future of the company on the line? These are just some of the questions that may also be present in the minds of those who followed the Enron case. Sure there were varying degrees of deception and fraudulent acts from the part of many select individuals who sinned against Enron and its employees, but these cases would have been minimized or even averted altogether if the important decision making privileges was limited to a select few, or if the future-altering decision making capability is disseminated largely among a huge group of people that can provide a check and balance system for Enron. Roberts (2004) explained that ‘ if it is possible for others to make the decisions for a unit, then new options arise to design the decision-making process as well as the incentive schemes to get better performance on both dimensions. For example, the design might specify that a decision about a project arising in one unit that affects another would be implemented if and only if both units agree to it,† (Roberts, 2004, p. 51). Enron is an energy trading firm which was performing well in the early part of its existence. By the start of the 21st century, the problems that the bosses were trying to hide from the public and from the employees started to stank. Soon, events unfolded like dominoes falling one after the other as a consequence of information spilling out into the public’s attention. Before 2004, the public already had a clear idea about how Enron bosses were supposedly the one responsible for the defrauding of the employees and their company shares and other benefits, as well as the one responsible for the bankruptcy of Enron. One by one, key company officials stepped out of the light and implicated a new name, which will in turn implicate a much bigger name, until the dragnet sent out to see who was accountable for the fraudulent acts in Enron caught its top bosses, including Lay, Skilling and Fastow. Many individuals faced criminal charges, and many more simply went home not just jobless but are robbed of lifetime investments which Enron bosses manipulated and soon lost because of the wrong decisions they made on how to run the company and make it prosper and grow. Examples of how Enron management made wrong decisions during decision making moments abound in the history of the company. Take for example what happened in 1987 – instead of declaring the $190 million loss the company experienced, they concealed it instead, leading to criminal charges. This habit of Enron for opting to conceal losses instead of declaring it became a dangerous vice; when Fastow was aboard Enron, the same outlook affected the decision making of Enron, leading to increase in pile of cases wherein Enron through its top management consciously made actions that defraud the employees and the public. There was also the case of poor public relations by Enron which fanned the flames of panic that removed any possible opportunity for Enron to remedy the financial situation without creating hysteria that saw many stockholders selling their stocks due to the continued falling of the stock value of Enron. Statement of Problem – The most important decision that Enron’s executives faced was not the decision on whether or not to publicly announce about the bankruptcy; in fact, there was no decision making factor during that instance since the predicament of the company has already been decided regardless of what the top executives might have opted for: they were flat out broke and the public needs to know about this, that was the situation. The true decision making moment for Enron’s bosses was the time when they were deciding what the best option to take is with regards to the financial aspect of the company, including taxes, earnings and financial loses. It was a matter of facing a decision making task that provided the Enron bosses with two options – to do the right thing, or to opt for something that is morally and ethically inappropriate. The decision reached in this particular decision making instance was laced with the hope that the option they took would be free from serious repercussions and give them enough time to fix it all up again. Unfortunately for Enron, things did not work out as planned, and the criminal liability of the Enron bosses stemmed from the fact that they decided to do something which they consciously knew was detrimental to the welfare of the Enron company and its employees. During that particular instance, Lay could have opted to do the right thing and faced the consequences – by coming clean, he may have a more sympathetic public to support him in whatever efforts he may wish to undertake to revive Enron, and not be faced with the collapsing stock value since those who can sell theirs sell it in a frantic phase to rid themselves of the stock of the company which is nearing imminent bankruptcy. This showed how the people do not give second chances to those who squander their decision making privileges by making decisions bereft of the consideration of the good of the greater many. Decision making – John Hintze (2006), in his discussion about making smart decisions during decision making, used the case of the Enron collapse to open his discussion and establish the fact that problems are something that is foreseen, something that happened nonetheless owing to bad decision making. Hintze wrote, ‘should we have seen 9/11 coming? What about the Enron collapse? The Signs were there; people pointed them out, but the appropriate steps were not taken by those in a position to do something. Why is this? Politics? Greed? Those certainly contributed, but there was something else at work here, too: A failure of common sense in decision making’ (Hintze, 2006, p. 123). Enron: Bad decision making – Nothing can prove more about how bad the decision making went inside Enron camp more convincingly than the fact the company transformed from prosperous to poor overnight. This was the general characteristic of Enron through the traits shown by its leaders that reflect the Enron personality. There were earlier discussions in the paper about snippets on instances pointing to Enron’s penchant for making bad decision or for going to the resolving of a problem utilizing an option that is more questionable. Fox (2004) explained that ‘Enron believed that its expansion into international projects were positive initiatives simply because they put the company in more potential markets. In truth, Enron made bad business decisions that weren’t supported by the deal’s economics. The bad business decisions piled up, stretching from India to Brazil, pressuring the company to do something about its finances’ (Fox, 2004,p. 307). At least at this point, Fox is not pointing at the unethical aspect of the Enron decision making machinery, just the fact that they made decisions that were bad for the future of the company, but not to the extent of deliberately sabotaging the company or putting the company in danger with all known risk for personal gain. For Fox, it was a bad call plain and simple. But the matter of the fact is that not everyone sees it the way Fox does, and there are those who believe that there were ethical breaches in the decision making in Enron among its top bosses. The (absence of) Leaders in decision-making – Decision making in retrospective is one of the common line of thinking used when investigating events that led to growth or debacle. It is because decision making played an important part in shaping the future of the company; it is here where the foundation, or lack of it, was created via the decisions the bosses made or failed to make. To trace the problems or mark significant actions resulting from decision making which eventually resulted to either the success or failure of the company, it is not only the decision making events that are looked back to; the persons that made them were also put under the microscope, and among the qualities scrutinized is their decision making ability and their other characteristics that affect their decision making attitude and behavior. Professionals debate about the idea of a good decision, a bad decision, good intentions and bad intentions and how the good and bad effect that comes into play afterwards account for the overall accountability of a person wielding the power to make decisions that will have a tremendous impact on the future of the company, something which happened in Enron via Lay, Skilling, Fastow and the rest of the top figures of the company. Acuff (2004) explains that ‘if they make a decision that might not have been the decision I would have made, and they come and talk to me about it, we look at it and discuss it. There are a lot of different ways to skin the horse. I don’t go saying my idea is the only one that will get you where you want to go. I hold people accountable for good decision-making. If a bad outcome results from a bad decision – that’s a problem. But if a bad outcome results from a reasonable decision, then that’s business, and it could happen to anyone† (Acuff, 2004, p. 87). This was the predicament of those who are trying to evaluate the decision making actions of Enron top executives – did they make decisions, even bad decisions – with the sake of the company in mind, and gambled with their careers because they know that if their plans and actions go well, it is extremely beneficial for the company, in a very Machiavellian approach towards getting things done regardless of the means by which they did it, or were they just plain guilty of fraudulent actions? People who are burdened by the decision that impacts a lot of people is not always amenable to taking the high and moral grounds, that is why the adage about the end justifying the means, about getting things done at what ever cost, about delivering against the odds became popular because of people like the Enron bosses who (probably) acted upon their decision making duties by risking what can be a popularly bad decision. Indeed, it may be easy or even convenient for most people adversely affected by the Enron collapse to attribute the colossal corporate debacle to the top management figures of the company by criticizing their decisions as well as their faculty for sound decision making. While it is true that Enron’s top executives are responsible for the collapse of the company, it is not that easy to measure the level of ethical decision making attributes of Enron’s top brass. Goethals et al (2004) pointed out that â€Å"the complexity associated with ethical decision making and behavior, especially as it applies to leadership and the workplace, makes the construct extremely difficult to research†, adding that â€Å"Measuring an individual’s level of ethical decision making is challenging, particularly because the measurement instruments that are available have problems with priming and social-desirability effects; that is, questionnaires or other similar modes of data collection cue respondents to give answers that they believe are socially acceptable rather than answers that truly reflect their own actions or opinions (Goethals et. al. , 2004, p. 461). † Proof of which is the fact that all of these executives in question are career corporate leaders even before they joined Enron; their credentials played an important role regarding their selection for a corporate position as high as theirs. Because of this, as well as the factors that affect the credibility of the ability for identification of the real public pulse regarding the persons involved in the issue, ethical decision making levels of the persons involved is hard to ascertain, making claims for questionable ethical decision making consideration of the people lose important ground and stand on insufficient set of stable legs for proof and justification. Still, there are those who believe that the level of ethics that influences the decision making capabilities of the Enron bosses are without a doubt questionable, and this includes Mimi Swartz and Sherron Watkins who was quoted in the book edited by Kathy Fitzpatrick and Carolyn B. Bronstein. In the article, it mentions about how Swartz and Watkins â€Å"blame Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, and other company executives for privileging greed and arrogance over ethical business decisions† (Fitzpatrick and Bronstein, 2006, p. 79), the gist of the published work co-authored by the two individuals. Nalebuff and Ayres (2006) wrote that ‘the problem often arises because people ignore the costs and benefits that their decisions have on other people. We call this approach â€Å"Why don’t you feel my pain? † The more technical term for these effects is externalities. Decision makers who ignore externalities are bound to make bad decisions† (Nalebuff and Ayres, 2006, p. 67). This explanation greatly tarnishes the ethical value of the decision making ethics of Enron bosses because it shows that they are prone or inclined to make decisions even if the result of such decisions lead to negative effects that other people will experience. Niskanen (2005) believes that Lay, one of the top bosses of Enron, â€Å"should be judged on the basis of his personal actions, directions to subordinates, or the actions of subordinates that he implicitly condoned by knowing about it without attempting to correct – not on the basis of what he should have known† (Niskanen, 2005, p. 6). Lay’s condoning of actions is a result of a personal and professional decision that he made – or failed to make – and because of that, Niskanen believes that Lay is answerable for any criminal charges that would result from that particular action (or inaction). Watkins was thinking of the company and its employees and their future and hers as well, when she made the decision to let her superiors, particularly Lay, know about the possible accounting problems and the making public of the current and real financial and trade status of the company. This clearly illustrates the difference in ethics when it comes to decisio n making. Decision making, ethics and public perception – Decision making in business is not merely a power or a privilege that one can use at will without thinking of the consequences that might happen should the decision resulted into something that is considered as adversely negative and detrimental to the welfare of the employees, their jobs and the company they work for. Those who are provided with such amenity to go along with their job description should consider that it is also their responsibility to make sure that their employees and subordinates do not think that they are squandering away their decision making privilege and everything that goes along with it. This was the prevailing attitude or outlook of the Enron employees especially nearing the imminent collapse of the company. The absence of ethical consideration resulted to the losing of the credibility of the bosses of Enron because they were not careful with how they undertake their decision making tasks. While bankruptcy is something that is very difficult to accept and impacts greatly in the lives of the employees especially the rank and file blue collar workers, there is a sense of adding insult to injury during occasions wherein the employees are starting to realize that all of the unfortunate things that happen in the company and in their careers are all a result of the faulty, incompetent and unethical decision making of the top management echelon and not because the company was helpless in the onslaught of a devastating economic problem, like how companies closed down during the Great Depression despite the efforts of American businessmen to keep the different industries alive and breathing. During the collapse of Enron, the US is experiencing a very stable economy far from that which characterized US economy during the Great Depression, and is shielded securely from the impact of whatever it was that was happening in the global economic and business landscape, and so during the Enron collapse, the collective finger was pointing an accusing index digit to Enron bosses and majority of the cause of their indignation originates from the sloppy decision making capabilities of Enron bosses who lost their credibility the moment they lost Enron. Brazelton and Ammons (2002) wrote in the book they co-wrote: â€Å"The Ethics Resource Center conducted a survey in 2000 in which it learned that 43 percent of respondents believed that their supervisors are generally poor examples of honest managers, and the same number were pressured to compromise their own integrity or that of their organization during decision making. The survey also identified a strong connection between employees’ perceptions of their supervisors and their own ethical behavior (Brazelton and Ammons, 2002, p. 388). † Enron decision making: the two-pronged factors – It can be pointed out that one of the problems that happened to Enron is the ineffective of decision making among top executives – first, their top executives failed to make correct decisions when they are required to do so, and second, Enron was not fully complimented with a set of professionals which could have contributed to the decision making process, and in the process provided the possibility of infusing new or different ideas that could have altered the outcome of the decision making process. Fitzpatrick and Bronstein (2006) did not look exclusively on Enron’s bosses and the decisions they made in the management of Enron and the company’s money and asset, rather, the two editors focused on the absence of a key top management personnel and took the presence of such a void as a sign that Enron is not even prioritizing the welfare of the company and its employees. The book Ethics in Public Relations: Responsible Advocacy, which includes the Enron case as one of the important case studies to point out the importance of the role of public relations, explains that â€Å"perhaps the governance of these companies was such that they did not care about their publics, and did not want the advice of senior-level public relations officer playing an active or dominant role in organizational decision making† (Fitzpatrick and Bronstein, 2006, pg 179). Conclusion – Niskanen (2005) summed up the Enron case on its characteristic of thriving in bad decisions made by its corporate leaders by saying in the book that ‘the most important lesson from the Enron collapse, however, is that Enron failed because of a combination of bad business decisions, not because its accounts were misleading’ adding that ‘the major business decisions that most contributed to its collapse were a series of bad investments, most of which were in the traditional asset-rich industries; the failure to reconcile two quite different business models; and the decision to focus management objectives on reported revenues and earning rather than on the present value of future cash flows’ (Niskanen, 2005, p. 6). Are they poor in decision making, or was the decision making adversely affected by other concerns and priorities outside of Enron that the results of the decision made for Enron looks like those who made the call did not even think about how this course of action will affect Enron? There are no sufficient proofs to point that the case was the latter; for a company that became seventh all in all in the Fortune 500 at least once, it is unthinkable how there will be conscious efforts to sink the company by making wrong decisions, deliberately or not. The point of the paper is not the assertion of the guild of Skilling, Lay or even Fastow, it’s the establishing of the point that decision making, when not handled properly, can turn even the most profitable company into a nose-diving wreck in a short period of time, that decision making plays an important role in how a person defines his or her life and how he or she leads a company and that because of these factors, no one should have an excuse why decision making was taken lightly and without much thought or care. All the people can see is a group of people who made wrong decisions several times, the resulting web and how they got trapped in that web, that is assuming that there was no malice or hidden agenda that the bosses perpetrated in lieu of Enron’s collapse. In the end, only Lay (now deceased) and the elite circle of the Enron executive clique will be the ones who would really know about the truth regarding ethics and the decision making in Enron leading to the collapse of the company. Many would ask, and some would presume, the reasons as well as the level of guilt of these leaders when it comes to breaching the ethical requirements needed when undertaking decision making for a company. Regardless, the decisions they made created far reaching ripples and altered the lives of many individuals who invested not just their time, strength and life’s savings into the company but as well as their but as well as their faith and trust, which are not in shattered pieces because of the bad decisions that Enron executives made. Crawford (2006) further elaborated on the pointed by explaining that ‘bad decisions by a major company, however, cause major disruptions for all of the company’s stakeholders’. He pointed at the case of Enron as one of his examples, saying that ‘the Enron disaster, as one example, certainly had devastating impacts on the lives of most of Enron employees (including the middle managers and professionals who invested in the company-sponsored Enron 401[K] plans) and also caused suffering for many individual investors who purchased Enron stock on the open market. Thousands of other Enron stakeholders, including Enron’s suppliers and customers, also suffered,’ (Crawford, 2006, p. 26). Indeed, Enron’s decision making had a hand in how the company turned out to be.