Abstract:
The catastrophe caused by the failure of Enron could not compare with the damage this
company would have caused if it had succeeded, The relentless emphasis on the importance
of shareholder value in recent times has created the conditions for the disconnection of
corporations such as Enron from their essential moral underpinnings, encouraging them to
concentrate exclusively on financial performance, and to neglect not just the wider stakeholder
interests of customers and employees, but the essential interests of the economies and
communities in which they operate. The problem with established economic theories of
corporate governance is that they misconceive the irreducible core of corporate governance,
at the same time as underestimating the complexity of the phenomenon.
