The document discusses how two documentaries, The Corporation and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, shape perceptions of corporate identity and behavior. The Corporation depicts corporations as powerful artificial entities that prioritize profits over people. It analyzes how Enron developed a culture of greed and risk-taking through reckless leadership. The film shows how Enron exploited loopholes to profit while harming others. Both documentaries subtly employ satire and edited interviews to examine the construction and ethics of corporations.

1. Corporate Identity viewed through the documentary lens Corporate Advertising & Image – COM 9655 Professor Alison Griffiths By Andrew Ciccone

2. Corporate identity shaped by documentary film The Corporation and Enron: The smartest guys in the room are evaluated in terms of how this medium shapes our attitudes and behavior of corporate identity. The company’s image is a reflection of an organization’s identity . . . how each constituency views your organization (Argenti, 2002).

3. the Corporation The corporation is part of the jigsaw of society . . . [it has] extraordinarily powerful, it reaches everywhere . . . it transforms the lives of people . . . corporations are artificial creations . . . a monster . . . trying to devour as much profit as possible at anyone’s expense (Abbott & Achbar2004).

4. The documentary A documentary lends itself to a sense of something being more objective “nonfiction” in strong contrast with other mediums such as feature films (Corner, 2002). “Documentary” is a category that has been defined and applied in relation to a sense of public values. Ideals have been framed by a range of authoritarian, liberal, and radical perspectives.

5. Film treatments The use of paraphrasing, and other visual techniques can influence our view of events. Both of these documentaries subtly employ a satiric style evidenced within the Enron film with titles as, “Enron’s Ride of Broken Dreams” . Subtle musical undertones emphasize the biased voice-overs, utilizing corporate styling of radical and informed voices to pull apart the history, construction, ethics, even the very legal basis of a corporation. Dramatically posed interviews are interwoven into this documentaries in streams of elegantly edited imagery.

6. Enron:The smartest guys in the room At the center of the Enron case are three senior executives: Kenneth Lay, CEO and founder; Jeffery Skilling, Enron president and heir apparent; and Andrew Fastow, chief financial officer (CFO). Ken Lay, the son of a Baptist minister, was the force behind the initial transformation of a small, Houston-based pipeline company into an energy-trading giant. Much of Lay’s success is attributable to state and federal legislation deregulating the energy industry (Fox, 2003).

7. Reckless behavior Enron had developed a “culture of self-conscious greed and reward”, risk taking had become the dominant value in the company. As acting CEO, Skilling espoused a Darwinian corporate philosophy and a performance review standard that resulted in a 15% annual turnover. Skilling planned and took trips where people could actually die, motocross, wild adventures – “ the trips were legend”.

8. Free market energy trade Lay’s broad vision of the bureaucratic energy industry was revolutionary and included more free-market commodity trading of natural gas and electricity. The market price of Enron’s stock was everywhere, even in the elevator, everyone was consumed with it. They were so good, they convinced the investment community that they were “new”, “different”, and “innovative”.

9. Free marketization of energy Enron maximized the flow of energy to states with power needs from areas with an oversupply of power that we may eventually see in the future.

10. Lapse in judgment In 1987 rogue traders, Louis Borget and Thomas Mastroeni, almost bankrupted the company through a trading subsidiary called Valhalla. Lay, called a meeting explaining the situation to Enron employees, ‘I promise you, we will never again risk Enron’s credibility in business ventures’ It was a commitment he would fail to keep. (Eichenwald 2005, 39).

11. Please keep making us millions From the moment Key Lay decided to ignore out right deception and fraud is when the corporate identity of Enron was forever shaped. Instead of firing the traders who had recklessly made poor judgments the response from Ken Lay’s office was, “Please keep making us millions”.

12. Moral responsibility The Enron traders totally rape California, . . . exploiting every loophole in the State of California. Most people have a sense of culture, basic beliefs about how people should interact with each other. Such belief systems are a powerful force which shapes our behavior as society, and our business dealings (Fombrun, 1996).

13. Explaining Enron Enron was doing all sorts of questionable things, taking enormous risks . . . and performing terribly. Leading financial institutions took part in what amounted to synergistic corruption. Bad debts were hidden in partnerships creating conflicts of interests overseen by CFO Andrew Fastow who was involved in deception as well as conflicts of interest (Bryce, 2002). This was consistent with a larger pattern of secrecy and outright deception common at Enron (Behr & Witt ,2002a, 2002b).

14. Abuses of power Johnson (2002) attributed the collapse to a series of fundamental ethical lapses by Enron’s leaders. These include abuse of power, excessive privilege, deceit, inconsistent treatment of internal and external constituencies, misplaced and broken loyalties, and irresponsible behavior (Johnson 2002, pp. 7-10). Enron should not viewed as a aberration . . . everyone was on the bandwagon, and it could happen again, (Abbott & Achbar, 2004).

15. Corporate responsibility Enron’s management failed in their communication-based responsibility to both larger social values and to their stakeholders. Shrivastava (1995) points out the necessity of enlarging the scope of company responsibility towards less financial and more nature oriented issues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aERv_sEjkXA

16. Fin Thank you for your attention.