The lessons of `Enron'

Abstract

While the novelty of Enron and WorldCom as corporate scandals should not be overstated, these events are distinguished by the sheer volume of media coverage that followed in their wake. Drawing from an analysis of over 300 newspaper and magazine articles, this article argues that while this media coverage varies in its diagnosis of the scandals, it is rooted in a common set of taken-for-granted assumptions as to the nature, form, and operation of financial markets. These various points of complementarity suggest that the coverage of the scandals is less significant as an exercise in collective sense-making than as a re-investment in a particular market discourse, a form of financial intelligibility germane to the scandals themselves and instructive vis-à-vis the future study of corporate and white-collar crime.