Search results

The bankruptcy of Enron Corp. has evolved into a scandal of enormous proportions involving allegations of fraud, corruption and unethical practices on the part of Enron’s corporate executives, members of its board of directors, external auditors, and high government officials in the USA. No doubt there will be many articles written about various aspects of the Enron scandal. The focus of this paper is on the relationships between Enron’s business model and the deregulatory phase of the American economy during the 1980s and 1990s. It is the argument of this paper that deregulation in the US electricity and natural gas industries fostered the creation of the Enron business model, and that this model was unsustainable, resulting in the demise of Enron Corp. Furthermore, while Enron can be viewed as an example of capitalistic excess, the paper reveals how the Enron business model developed as an American form of a public private partnership, similar to the types of public private partnerships that have been created in recent years in the UK. Investigating Enron as a public private partnership may help us to better understand the role of public private partnerships in contemporary capitalism and shed some light on the advisability of deregulatory schemes and the unintended consequences that can result from such schemes.

Online education. Dialog. named the Eagle‐Union Community School Corp's project INSITE the First Place winner of its annual Excellence in Online Education Awards. The award was presented at the Databases in Schools conference held in conjunction with Online/CD‐ROM '91 in San Francisco. The recipients received a plaque and $2000 worth of online connect time for use in the Dialog Classroom Instruction Program of their choice.

Web newspapers promise low cost searching. World Wide Web editions of three major newspapers have gone live on the Internet, offering either free or low cost access to full‐text articles, and the ability to search archives of back issues. Both News International, which is offering the UK Times and Sunday Times, and the New York Times anticipate there being little impact on revenues through third party hosts.

This paper traces the development of Enron Corp. from a regulated natural gas distribution company to a worldwide energy trading company to its ultimate demise in bankruptcy in December 2001. The paper examines whether Enron should be viewed as an accounting failure, with investors and creditors being severely misled by false financial statements, or whether it was a business failure that was obscured by accounting practices that strained the limits of credibility. It is the contention of this paper that astute financial analysis would have revealed the instability of the Enron business model, thereby alerting investors and creditors to the lack of credit worthiness of the company. At the same time, the paper argues that had there been an appropriate level of transparency in the financial statements, investors and creditors would have been provided with a more realistic view of the company’s financial position and its results of operations, thereby facilitating their ability to assess the viability of the company and avoid their bankruptcy losses.

In this historical analysis, Jacques Ellul’s theory of propaganda is applied to analyse the changes of China’s propaganda. It is found that China’s propaganda is undergoing structural transformations from depending on human organisation to extensive control and use of media technology. Sociological propaganda as a complement to political propaganda has significantly expanded; integration propaganda replaced agitation propaganda. International image management by the government has become a new dimension of China’s propaganda. The research is one of the first to observe such structural changes.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

You say you're a multi‐billion dollar telecommunications company with a very successful core business in long distance, wireless and local access, and paging, and you just spent $2 billion investing in a heavily indebted media corporation.

Reforms set forth in Sarbanes‐Oxley and the NYSE, AMEX, and NASD are designed to prevent the reoccurrence of corporate collapses at companies such as Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc., and Global Crossing Ltd. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the possible impact the reforms may or may not have had in controlling the abuses uncovered in recent corporate failures.

This paper examines the reforms to corporate governance and the rationale behind the reforms, and examines how the actual governance structures of Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing during the years of their accounting scandals compared to the new requirements. It also offers a discussion as to whether the new reforms would have been helpful in preventing management's manipulation of earnings.

Global Crossing's governance structure would have satisfied a majority of the reforms. Enron's and WorldCom's governance structures would have satisfied less than half of the reforms.

This paper highlights the need for management and shareholders alike to focus on the substance of the reforms and not merely the form of the reforms in order to make meaningful improvements to corporate governance.

This paper should serve as a warning to the investing public. The reforms in and of themselves should not be relied on to prevent future corporate scandals. The reforms, however, do focus the spotlight directly on corporate boardrooms where shareholders can now insist that directors' interests be separate from those of the CEO and upper management.