Changing Our Questions: Reflections on the Corporate Scandals

In the aftermath of recent corporate scandals, several narrowly defined “problems” were quickly identified and readily classified into handy categories including independence, compensation, accounting, and disclosure. Various solutions were equally quickly developed. In this paper I attempt to slow down this search for quick and easy “solutions.” I begin by outlining the stories told in the press and various hearings that offered explanations of and solutions for the scandals. Drawing upon the work of Bauman, Fromm, and others, I then offer an alternative story line that provides a different perspective and examines the commonalities among the various scandals. This different perspective allows us to ask different questions about the significance of these scandals in the hope that these different questions may in turn suggest different solutions as possible responses. I close the paper by offering some alternative questions that could be asked in response to the scandals.