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Between October and November 2001 the world witnessed the collapse of Enron, a major US publicly traded corporation with global operations. The Enron case highlights the impact corporate failure has on American society and capital markets and underscores the need for better enforcement of regulations and ethical business behavior. This paper discusses the role played by Enron’s senior management, its board of directors, Enron’s auditors, consultants, bankers, Wall Street and the government, in the spectacular rise and fall of this corporate giant. It also examines the impact of Enron’s failure on its employees, the employees of Andersen, and on thousands of ordinary Americans who invested in the stock via their pensions and mutual funds. This paper highlights the conflicts of interest that pervade the financial system and discusses the social and financial impact of a combined business and oversight failure. Students and teachers of finance, corporate governance, and business strategy may be interested in this paper as a pedagogical tool to teach undergraduate finance, business ethics, business strategy, and corporate governance.

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of supply chain implementation issues on firm value.

Using case study methodology, this paper outlines the cases of Hershey and Nike and the impact of supply chain implementation issues on these firms’ value.

Difficulties in the implementation of supply chain management software designed to maximize firm value, can result in a disruption of a firm's supply chain, causing losses for the firm and a decline in firm value; thereby creating much disappointment for the firm's shareholders. Hence, great care should be taken with the implementation of new SCM solutions.

Future research may be directed at extending this work by examining the changes in the market values of a wide sample of client and provider firms following the implementation of new supply chain solutions.

When modifying a standard supply chain template to suit a customer's requirements, particular care should be used in implementation and provider firms should insist that clients follow the provider's implementation methodology. Complex SCM systems designed to track a multiplicity of product varieties, may lead to difficulties in implementation. Prior to switching to a new SCM system there should be adequate testing to see if the system meets the client's requirements. Premature switching can have disastrous consequences.

This research demonstrates the impact of implementation issues on the effectiveness of SCM technology.

In the words of Business Week, we occasionally witness scandals so vast that they profoundly shock our most deeply held beliefs about the honesty and integrity of corporate conduct. There is unlikely to be a more devastatingly spectacular demonstration of this than the collapse of US energy giant Enron. As recently as two years ago, investors could hardly have been more confident in Enron’s direction. Here we had a firm led by 17 directors with impeccable records, MBA qualifications and hundreds of years in combined business experience. In this environment how could things possibly go wrong? But wrong they certainly went and the furor surrounding this catastrophe is likely to persist for months, if not years, to come. Surely among the embers of what remains of one of the world’s largest energy firms and the lives that ran it there are some fundamental lessons to be learned in order to ensure nothing of this magnitude is ever allowed to happen again.

The purpose of this paper aims at investigating which lean supply chain management (LSCM) practices efficiently improve the supply chain performance.

To achieve that, a cross-sectional survey was carried out with 113 manufacturing companies undergoing a lean implementation. The proposed method combines complementary methods of multivariate data analysis in order to determine which bundles of LSCM practices more efficiently entail improvements on supply chain performance.

The findings justify why some LSCM initiatives may find larger barriers than others, compromising their success due to misguided implementation efforts according to the desired performance improvement.

The empirical examination on the efficiency of LSCM practices with regards to a certain set of performance indicators provides guidelines with respect to LSCM implementation depending on which performance indicators are envisioned for improvement.

The increasing incidence of fraudulent financial reporting by firms in recent years raises concerns about investors' confidence in capital markets. Academicians and industry practitioners adopt diverse risk management techniques to detect fraudulent reporting of financial statements. This paper aims to determine the effectiveness of the Beneish M-score and Altman Z-score models for the early detection of material misstatements at Comscore, Inc., a media analytics firm in the United States of America.

The financial statements of Comscore Inc. from 2012 to 2018 were analyzed with the primary objective of early fraud detection by employing the Beneish M-score and the Altman Z-score.

The study’s outcomes indicate that the Beneish M-score is less predictable in fraud detection compared to the Altman Z-score. The study results did not confirm the efficacy of the Beneish model in predicting fraudulent financial statements. The study concludes that the choice of forensic tool greatly influences fraud detection outcomes.

The research findings can guide the policy decision-making of investors, financial auditors, and forensic auditors as this study provides some evidence of the effectiveness of forensic tools in the detection of financial statement fraud in corporate entities.

This is the first study to apply these two widely used tools to the most recent big corporate scandal: Comscore, Inc.

IN an article in The Economist for February 17th, entitled “Facts about Fiction,” the writer refers to “this useful but unobtrusive social service” (the public libraries) and the unaccustomed limelight in which they were bathed by the Centenary. The adjectives, congenial as they are and, indeed, as is the tone of the whole article, merit further examination; but the main subject discussed is the library which lends books for money profit. It may be that there will never be a condition of affairs in which the supply of fiction—however it is given—will not be called into question. It is, we are convinced, desirable that it should be reviewed from time to time by the public librarian. It is hoped that this number may be a useful instance. The writer, we notice, has memories of libraries which were “jolted” out of the cast‐iron system of the indicator method of issue by the increase of reading between the two wars. We know that this freedom was won before the first world war. The other point that concerns us is the assertion that a general opinion of light reading in public libraries is based on a wrong view. “In even the biggest and most liberally provided public libraries the addict of one class of novel—be it ‘typist‐marries‐boss’ or ‘riding the range’—can only find enough of them to whet his appetite”; he must soon turn to a circulating library. We think it is probable, on reflection, that most librarians would agree.

Editorial Surviving the Revolution A revolution has been under way in British public services in the last ten years. Managers are being forced to be ever more efficient and accountable and they are borrowing heavily from the ways of the private sector.

Although the popularity of the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology has illustrated many benefits over the years for those organisations who have implemented it, this strategy has received less attention in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to critically assess the current status of LSS implementation in Saudi Arabian organisations.

This research is based on a descriptive survey questionnaire which has been derived from two systematic literature reviews. The survey was distributed to 400 organisations in Saudi Arabia using Qualtrics online software. In total, 146 responses were received where 102 responses were completed and analysed.

The findings of the survey highlighted that the implementation of LSS is still in the early stages in organisations within Saudi Arabia. This was clearly shown by many factors such as years of deploying LSS, LSS infrastructure, level of awareness of LSS, impact of LSS on business functions and so on.

The primary limitation of this study is that data has been collected from an online survey and therefore no deeper insights could have been captured from the survey. This calls for future research to be undertaken by executing semi-structured interviews in selective organisations within Saudi Arabia.

This paper contributes to the current status of LSS in Saudi Arabian organisations. It also gives recommendations to guide the future of LSS in Saudi organisations by comparing LSS literature with best practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the most common themes within Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in the manufacturing sector, and to identify any gaps in those themes that may be preventing users from getting the most benefit from their LSS strategy. This paper also identifies the gaps in current literature and develops an agenda for future research into LSS themes.

The following research is based on a review of 37 papers that were published on LSS in the top journals in the field and other specialist journals, from 2000 to 2013.

Many issues have emerged in this paper and important themes have cited which are: benefits, motivation factors, limitations and impeding factors. The analysis of 19 case studies in the manufacturing sector has resulted in significant benefits cited in this paper. However, many gaps and limitations need to be explored in future research as there have been little written on LSS as a holistic strategy for business improvement.

It is important for practitioners to be aware of LSS benefits, limitations and impeding factors before starting the LSS implementation process. Hence, this paper could provide valuable insights to practitioners.

This paper is based on a comprehensive literature review which gives an opportunity to LSS researchers to understand some common themes within LSS in depth. In addition, highlighting many gaps in the current literature and developing an agenda for future research, will save time and effort for readers looking to research topics within LSS.