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Korruption, Betrug und ‘Corporate Governance’ in den USA — Anmerkungen zu Enron

Corruption, fraud, and corporate governance — a report on enron

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Leviathan

‘The United States has the best corporate governance, financial reporting, and securities markets systems in the world’ (Business Roundtable 2002).

Zusammenfassungen

Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications und Arthur Andersen sind US-Firmen, deren Namen inzwischen zu Metaphern für Betrug und Bilanzfälschung geworden sind. Die wichtigsten Anklagepunkte werden in diesem Artikel zusammengefasst. Es wird die Frage gestellt, ob die Betrugsfälle auf individuelles Fehlverhalten zurückzuführen sind oder ob sie das Ergebnis eines systematischen „Versagens“ der Institutionen in den USA darstellen. Folgende Hypothesen werden erwogen:

  • Abweichendes Verhalten wird ebenso wie normenkonformes Verhalten durch die Sozialstruktur „produziert“ (Merton).

  • Die durch die Globalisierung verschärfte Konkurrenz zwingt Unternehmen dazu, im Grenzbereich zwischen „gerade noch legal“ und „kriminell“ zu operieren.

  • Aktien-Optionen als Managergehälter sind nicht ohne Nebenwirkungen: Sie erzeugen systematische Anreize zur Bilanzfälschung.

Abstract

Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, and Arthur Andersen are company names that have recently become metaphors for falsified balance sheets, corruption, and fraudulent bankruptcy. In this paper the main charges are summarized and illustrated by examples primarily from the Enron case. The analysis of the empirical evidence should answer the following questions:

  • Are the bankruptcies of Enron or WorldCom the result of deceptive strategies for which certain individual executive managers are responsible? If so, the actors in the Enron drama would only be particularly greedy specimens of the homo oeconomicus.

  • Or are these cases of fraud rather the result of institutional failures? In this case, the bankruptcies would have to be explained by the structure of the economic institutions in the United States.

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Authors
  1. Paul Windolf
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Paul Windolf, Professor für Soziologie an der Universität Trier, 54286 Trier

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Windolf, P. Korruption, Betrug und ‘Corporate Governance’ in den USA — Anmerkungen zu Enron. Leviathan 31, 185–218 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11578-003-0010-4

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