9. Guest Lecture by Jim Alexander: Managing the Crooked E

Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform (PLSC 270)

Jim Alexander, former CFO of the Enron subsidiary Enron Global Power and Pipeline, offers an insider's account of Enron's corporate culture and operations before the company's spectacular fall. The leaders of Enron, Mr. Alexander asserts, disregarded concerns over the company's ethics. Enron strategically found and exploited loopholes in accounting regulations to make their transactions as opaque as possible. Lack of regulation and oversight allowed Enron's traders to inflate their numbers. Organizations that were in a position to oversee Enron's operations sometimes faced grossly misaligned incentives that rewarded negligence. Mr. Alexander emphasizes the notion of the "rational economic man" in Enron's corporate culture, and its predominance over notions of ethical corporate behavior.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction
04:38 - Chapter 2. Enron Backgrounder with Jim Alexander
10:47 - Chapter 3. Enron: What Went Wrong?

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Fall 2009.