ANTHONY H. CATANACH JR. is an associate professor in the School of Business at Villanova University, as well as the Cary M. Maguire Fellow at the American College Center for Ethics in Financial Services. His professional experience includes five years as an audit manager with KPMG and six years in the financial services industry. Dr. Catanach has received numerous awards for his publication, teaching, and curriculum innovation efforts. He has authored numerous articles on a variety of accounting, finance, and management issues, as well as several business education texts..
We already have discussed the context for Enron’s crimes by describing the Roaring Nineties as a period of accounting exaggeration and worse. We then referenced the first SEC filing that confessed some of the crimes by Enron’s managers. In this and the next essay, we turn our attention to the auditor Arthur Andersen; specifically, we [...]
Nov 142011
Nov 072011
Many of us if asked to recall the details of a past crime or injustice would be hard pressed to do so. Similarly, today’s young accountants all have heard about Enron as example of financial reporting failure. However, as the years pass, the details of this accounting crime also have faded. The tenth anniversary is [...]
Approximately ten years ago, the truth emerged about Enron, that once snappy company with a different business model. As the world learned, we should have focused on the ethics, culture, strategy, and business model of the firm, which unfortunately is a very old story.
Oct 032011
Cheating is all around us. Athletics provide a never ending series of ethical disappointments whether it be the use of performance enhancing drugs in bicycling, baseball, and football, the bout fixing in Sumo wrestling, or the recent NCAA rule violations by Ohio State’s football program.
An entire generation has seen their dream of retirement shattered by the failure of the accounting profession. CPAs are supposed to be the “watchdogs” and “gatekeepers” that make sure company financial statements are what they say they are. Instead, the past 15 years have dealt us a “dot-com” crisis, the 2002 financial reporting frauds (with [...]
J. EDWARD KETZ is an associate professor of accounting in the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science, a master’s degree in accountancy, and a Ph.D., all from Virginia Tech. Professor Ketz has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 1981. He also has taught at the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland. Professor Ketz has authored and edited 17 books including Hidden Financial Risk (Wiley, 2003) which examines the corporate culture and the institutional setting that engendered recent accounting scandals. Dr. Ketz has been cited in the popular and business press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Business Week, and USA Today. He also has appeared as an accounting commentator on CNN, National Public Radio, and Bloomberg Radio.