Professor Elam

Dell will restate earngins all the way back to 2003.   As usual, an internal audit revealed, are you ready for this yet again. that numbers had been
modified
fudged
altered
smoothed
you pick one
to make ”performance targets’  How many times have we read this same story?  Employees are given incentives for stock options or bonuses based on financial performance. Well they may not be able to get the company to perform but they can certainly get the financials to do so. 

We will be discussing accounting ethics or the lack thereof in all our classes this semester.  Will anyone suffer for all this at Dell? Well the stockholders did as the stock price dropped from the 40s to the low 20s the last few years amid specualtion that all was not well at Dell.  And sure enough, it wasn’t.