Phil Elmore: Individual Authoring Services

Equal Opportunity
Misunderstanding Enron

Columnist Maureen Dowd's opinion piece in this morning's paper had as its theme the evils of patriarchal domination. She made some very good points about the horrific effects on all humanity within cultures that marginalize, exclude, degrade, or otherwise oppress women. However, the column also included a casual comment about the "macho" Enron scandal as part of a list of male-originated ills.

I read that a couple of times trying to wrap my mind around her point. A "macho" scandal? I realized over my morning coffee that Ms. Dowd doesn't understand the significance of the Enron debacle any more than the plurality of armchair editorialists do.

The significance of Enron is that it has no significance. The events and actions encompassing the scandal are symbolic, emblematic, symptomatic, representative, and characteristic of a company that is badly mismanaged. The motivations and explanations for that mismanagement can and may range from utter incompetence to naked avarice, but at the ends and anywhere in the middle of this spectrum, the crime perpetrated is one of poor stewardship.

If I'm so stupid that I cause my company's stock to plummet from eighty gazillion dollars a share to four tenths of a peso for lots of one hundred shares, I'm a bad manager. If I'm so obsessed with enriching myself that I do so in a way that destroys the very means through which I am gaining my wealth, I'm not just a bad manager -- I'm a bad profiteer. (Only an imbecile gives up all future profit for a short-term increase in present profit when he or she could still reap present profit at a lower but significant level.)

That Enron was run into the ground is not an indictment of Capitalism. It does not constitute a devastating critique of our culture. It does not invalidate the profit motive. It is not a skirmish in the class war for world domination on the part of corporations. It is not compelling evidence that energy company executives are leaping and cavorting naked in pools of crude oil while laughing maniacally about how the Little Guy got screwed before having a towel-snap fight in their Italian-marble-tiled Boy's Club locker room. And for pity's sake, it isn't an example of something specific to which bathroom you use. Bad managers can be men, women, women who used to be men, cross-dressers, and people who use the phrase "Human Capital."

Resist the urge to make more out of Enron -- or of any business failure -- than it really is. Free enterprise isn't utopia, but then, nothing that actually works is. Freedom of action is no guarantee of success. Businesses fail. The business cycle of expansion and retraction of the economy, of boom and bust, bull and bear, does not stop simply because we pull on Alan Greenspan's sleeve and ask him to make it happen. And no matter what we think, there's no way to stop bad management from happening. Managers, after all, are just human beings -- and human beings can be profoundly stupid.

That's not significant. It's just a fact.