Enron: the Company

“So far as we know it, the Enron story is one of artfully managed expectations. Company executives created high expectations among investors regarding the company’s growth potential and their unique skill-set to reach it, producing for a time an extraordinarily high stock market valuation. Meanwhile, the economic reality was turning out to be more sobering. Increasingly aggressive, apparently fraudulent, steps were taken to report financial results and conditions that would not deflate expectations in a way that would put the managers’ jobs, compensation and perquisites – not to mention social status and self-esteem – immediately at risk.” (Langervoort, 2002, p. 1)