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Human Relations
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Oedipus Rex at Enron: Leadership, Oedipal struggles, and organizational collapse

Mark Stein

Universities of Warwick, Cambridge, Brunel and the London School of Economics, m.stein{at}imperial.ac.uk

This article is intended to contribute to our understanding of the December 2001 collapse of Enron. The existing literature on Enron's demise falls largely into two broad areas, involving either `micro' psychological explanations or `macro' accounts that emphasize the workplace and its environment; this article is an exploratory study that focuses on a new interpretation which links the two areas more closely together. It is proposed that Enron's culture was influenced by both `micro' and `macro' factors: an experience of unsuccessful paternal authority figures within the family history of Enron's leaders, coupled with an experience of problematic government and regulatory regimes associated with the gas industry. Drawing on concepts from psychoanalysis and its application to organizational dynamics, it is argued that these `micro' and `macro' factors helped to generate an Oedipal mindset in Enron's leaders according to which external authority was seen to be weak and not worthy of respect, and that this contributed to Enron's demise. Implications for theory are examined.

Key Words: authority • collapse • Enron • leadership • Oedipus complex • psychoanalysis

Human Relations, Vol. 60, No. 9, 1387-1410 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726707082852
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?