EDITOR'S NOTE: A video interview with UH Law Center dean Nancy Rapoport is available.

March 9, 2004

By Mike Emery

The Enron scandal is still making headlines. As the company’s former executives are brought to trial, Nancy Rapoport, dean of the University of Houston’s Law Center, says that such cases occur too often due to their hurried conclusions.

Rapoport and Bala G. Dharan, professor of management at Rice University, co-authored the book,
“Enron: Corporate Fiascos and Their Implications.” The book collects expert commentary from a 30 legal and business minds.

“We seem as a culture to make these mistakes once every 10 years,” Rapoport said. “We don’t appear to have learned from it. We tend to rush to judgment and rush to fix the situation as opposed to studying it.”

Rapoport’s and Dharan’s book presents essays on the Enron case and divides them into chapters according to subject. From ethics to culture to lessons learned, the book offers a host of viewpoints from both academics and private sector professionals.

Among the UH faculty who contributed to the book are Leslie Griffin, professor of law; Jacqueline Lang Weaver, professor of law; Geraldine Szott Moohr, associate professor of law; Michelle Foss, research assistant professor of law, and Victor Flatt, professor of law. In addition to UH faculty, the book features essays from Deborah Rhode, professor of law at Stanford University, and Robert Gordon, professor of law and legal history at Yale University.

“The beauty of this book is that it isn’t designed for one particular audience,” Rapoport said. “It’s
aimed at law students, business students, undergrads and the general public.”

Also contributing to “Enron” is Rapoport’s husband, Jeffery Van Niel, who co-authored the essay, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Skilling,” with his wife. Van Niel also provided the book’s cover art, which features a Titanic-like ocean liner underneath clouds labeled “Stock Options,” “Self-Dealing,” “Conflicts of Interest” and “Hidden Debt.” The ship is heading straight for an iceberg titled “Hubris.”

Rapoport said that the Enron case is unique because of its far-reaching impact. While the company’s employees lost jobs and retirement benefits, institutional and individual investors also were negatively affected.

She added that cases such as Enron’s tend to reoccur not only because of a failure to recognize past mistakes, but due to multiple shifts in companies’ leadership.

“Corporate key players change with the exception of a few,” Rapoport said. “Boards of directors rotate and CEOs go from one place to the next. Because some companies are constantly in flux, the people who can learn from their own experiences are not around.”