Contents

• a. Introduction into business leadership (21st century, especially on ethical leadership, select either one school of thought or one model)
• b. Introduction to Enron
• c. Brief Literature review relevant to the topic (pros and cons), business leadership, models, ethical leadership, challenges of leadership
• d. Input on item i - provide facts and reliable references to support your analysis (Critical arguments in support or against the statement that ‘Leaders from Enron are accountable for its downfall as they were not ethically and morally responsible”, by making references mainly to roles played by Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling)
• e. Input on item ii - Deduction of emerging trends, put a model if not been added earlier [transactional] (Discussion of emerging trends and best practices in business leadership, related mainly to the ethics and moral responsibility of leaders / success story)
• f. Input on item iii – This is the part where having identified the issues /problems at Enron , in retrospect you try to make recommendation, in what ought to have been the preferred “leadership philosophy” (Recommendation on “leadership philosophy” for Enron that could have prevented its collapse.)

Description

Business leadership has been in continuous evolution since the period of the Second Industrial Revolution. For a long period of time, it evolved parallel to leadership in general such as that in the field of government administration, military and education. However, the period since the Second World War saw specific research in the arena of business and organizational aspects leading to various developments. Such developments continued into the second half of the 20th century and have become gradually mature since then. Therefore, companies started looking at ways in which individual productivity could be improved by focusing on the employee himself. The transformational leadership model showed a close connection with this requirement and quickly gained in popularity. However, ethical concerns had been ignored especially in the field of business. It has only been in the last decade of the 20th century and the following period that there has been interest in ethical values of a business enterprise. Therefore, in the below sections, we examine the case of Enron and the various ethical issues connected to the senior management (Ciulla, 2004).