What Would Someone Studying The Descriptive View Of The Culture Find?

1. Describe in 1 paragraph (4-5 sentences) the organizational culture of Enron. What would someone studying the prescriptive views of the culture find? What would someone studying the descriptive views of the leadership find?

As directly stated from the documentary, the ultimate downfall of the company was due to “greed and pride”. Traders, who were described as aggressive, were not trained to do their job a certain way and instead acted on an instinctual feeling of maximizing money at any moral cost. Someone studying prescriptive theory wouldn’t be thrilled with lack of a specific way to perform the daily functions at Enron that led to the greed fueled decisions with minimal oversight. Those who are studying descriptive views of leadership

“Kenny Boy” as he was referred to was from poor, humble beginnings. At a young age he worked extremely hard to make better for not only himself but his family. Lay’s deregulation of energy markets was very innovative at the time and he was heralded for these radical ideals. Lay’s relationship with the Bush family also seemed to make him a larger than life figure. Another heroic figure in the organization was the CEO, Jeffery Skilling. Skilling was said to appear as a prophet when he first arrived at Enron because he exuded confidence in his workers and the company. At a young age Skilling was confident to tell his Harvard Business School professor that he was “fucking smart” when asked if he thought of himself as intelligent. Skilling was thought of as a large risk taker in his company and stories were told about how he and a group of select co-workers and customers would go on trips to perform daring stunts and extreme sports risking their lives. Skilling’s subordinates respected him and responded to his actions so closely that when Skilling did something like get Lasik eye surgery his subordinates

I would compare their expectations to their workers to be most like Fayol’s theory of a classical organization. Fayol’s theory is most clear when analyzing the principles of management. Managers created a rigid hierarchy where each employee had someone to report to including the top executives who needed to carry out their fiduciary duty. The issue with this hierarchy that existed was that subordinates would manipulate data to show positive results. These positive numbers were used to appease stakeholders and shareholders. The other aspect of Fayol’s theory that applies to Enron was that there was a clear reward system based off their work performance. This system was called the Performance Review Committee or the PRC and the purpose of the system was to push the workers to do their best two receive two separate rewards. Workers were working to be rated in the outside of the bottom 10% of the company and to receive bonuses for a good