Inside Arthur Andersen: Shifting Values, Unexpected Consequences
Susan E. Squires, Cynthia J. Smith, Lorna McDougall, William R. Yeack “Inside Arthur Andersen: Shifting Values, Unexpected Consequences"
FT Press | 2003-06-12 | ISBN: 0131408968 | 208 pages | PDF | 1,2 Mb
FT Press | 2003-06-12 | ISBN: 0131408968 | 208 pages | PDF | 1,2 Mb
Reader's review:
I never thought about the thousands of people all over the world who conscientiously practised their profession but were brought down by a series of scandals by people they never knew working in offices they never dealt with. This book is the fall of Arthur Andersen from their point of view. It details the history of Arthur Andersen from its founding until the end and tries to makes sense of what happened. They do a powerful job, making the reader sensitve to the size and corporate culture of Andersen and explaining how changes in the company to accomodate the changing demand for audit services opened the door to this kind of thing to happen. If you couple reading this book with books about Enron itself, you will definitely be feeling that only the people in Anderson involved in the scandal should have been brought down. That being said, they do leave in the "smoking guns" - the former scandals that had caused the SEC to say basically, "One more time and your dead" to Andersen. Enron was the one more time. Still, this book made me think that there might have been a better way of handling it.
–-No mirrors, please–-