Rating: 
Summary: Are you people crazy!
Review: I used to work for Arthur Andersen and happily call myself an Android. As a manager in the consulting practice for over 7 years, incidentally three years longer than Toffler, I saw how we collectively worked exceptionally hard to serve our clients. At no point in my career did I experience anything other than think straight, talk straight...and by the way I too intereacted with many of the Partners Toffler refers to. The bottom-line is this...Toffler is trying to make a buck on the fall of the firm. Her inability to assimiliate and contribute to the firm has manisfested itself in her speculative and unsubstantiated rhetoric. Finally, Toffler tries to establish herself as intelligent and credible by citing her work at Harvard, etc. Hey Toffler, I had a professor in college who said "be wary of those of try to convince others they are smart by simply stating so." DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!
Rating: 
Summary: Toffler
Review: I worked for Andersen for over a decade. Never heard of this person, or her practice. Too bad she never made herself or her practice heard within the firm. Somewhat of a jaded view, self-serving writeup explaining her failures to build a practice or business for her service line. Coming in as a partner, she certainly seemed to have to rely on others, rather than building her practice. She does make some good points of internal conflicts regarding billing practices. But if she was a true leader, she could sell her own projects by herself, as many top rated partners could. She relied on others to bring business to her, and then she was disappointed when she had to fight for revenues. Why did she not build her own practice? Too bad Barbara did not write this book BEFORE the failure of Andersen -- I'd then give her credit for sticking her neck out. Rather, she just piles on.
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Summary: Lessons for a capitalist society . . .
Review: More on the corporate ethics scandals! There is much to be learned about the slippery slope of situational ethics in this book. What is compelling is that Ms. Toffler tells all, including her own shortcomings, after her realization that she had started the slide down that slope! Ms. Toffler writes in a straightforward, no holds barred, manner that keeps one's interest even as we shake our heads in amazement at the missteps, greed, and self serving actions of these supposed watchdogs of the public interest. And, personally, I read this book with a profound sadness to realize that the great company founded by Arthur Andersen, with unassailable principles and a sense of public duty had come finally to this terrible end. Of her years as a consultant, Ms. Toffler says, "one important thing I've learned is that most people do not want to do unethical things. Usually, unethical or illegal behavior happens when decent people are put under unbearable pressure to do their jobs and meet ambitious goals without the resources to get the job done right." Her conclusion from her years at AA is that it's not the bad apples that cause the problems, it's the rotten culture. When an organization's leadership team takes their eye off the reason for the organization's existence (to provide a useful service or product to the consumer), and begins focusing on profit to the near exclusion of other values, then the inevitable slide to extinction begins. One cannot help but to wonder how we can possibly effectively change our corporations to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people when some of those stakeholders (investors in particular) insist on short term gains versus building enduring organizations. Finally, Ms. Toffler offers hope - lots of hard work, but some hope. Starting with what she knows best (corporations) she advises that we: (1) accept the appropriate level of regulation on our public accountants and client organizations (Sarbanes-Oxley as an example is a good start, but needs to go further); (2) change executive compensation to better balance the short term goals with building an organization to last; (3) rethink the structure of the CPA firms - partnerships don't work here; (4) know the true client - who really is the end user and are you serving their best interest; (5) limit the perks and goodies between customers, clients, and your own organization; (6) stay out of the campaign financing game - influence peddling can only hurt a large number of people. This book should be on every leader's desk and the lessons learned should be truly embraced, inculcated throughout our organizations, and expanded to our larger world economic community. A five out of five rating for Ms. Toffler.
Rating:
Summary: Well written explanation of the fall...a unique perspective
Review: Ms. Toffler and Ms. Reingold capture the essence of a once-great Firm struggling through the tumult of a changing business environment, poor management, and individual greed. Ms. Toffler was head of a specialized group of consultants within Arthur Andersen offering advice to clients on Ethics and related business issues. She laments the situation she and the Firm were in, offering advice to clients, while having no in-house ethics program ... "The Cobblers Child" as noted in a later chapter. As an ex-Android, I read this book with a mixture of fascination, fond memories, and sadness. Ms. Toffler provides an excellent explanation of the "fees generated" and "fees supervised" measures which drove partners and managers toward goals at odds with the best interests of the client. The results were, unfortunately, predictable. With her previous experience at the Harvard Business School and with her own consulting business, Ms. Toffler provides wonderful insight into the issues which ultimately led to the "suicide" of Arthur Andersen. This is a book of definite interest to any ex-AA or ex-AC employees and to anyone with an interest in the ethical basis for this sad chapter of American business.
Rating:
Summary: Don 't Waste Your Money
Review: Someday someone will write an insightful look into the fall of Arthur Andersen. This isn't it. I was very disappointed in this self-serving and surprisingly shallow work. It seems to have been written to generate a fast buck and to push the inflated self-view of the author. It does not contain any new inside stories or analysis...if that's what you're looking for, you'll do better pulling out a few old Wall Street Journal articles. The author was a junior direct-admit partner at AA. She did not grow up in AA and as such isn't qualified to describe the culture. Nor was she high enough in the firm to really know what was going on. Save your money...wait until a real inside story gets published.
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Summary: An interesting reading for an accounting professional.
Review: The book is an interesting examination of AA culture that, no doubt, lead to Andersen's demise. (Let's be honest, what company audited the majority of big name clients that had huge restatements?) If you are an accountant, buy this book, read it, compare it to your company, and pray God that you will not work with a person who does not understand the risk of audit failure. I am sure AA parnters new all too well what was going on at Enron or Worldcom or Global Crossing, I don't think they realized how serious were their audit failures. Author examines the culture that deteriorated to the point that it allowed bad audits to continue in the hopes that it would be somebody else's problem. Disclaimer:
Of course, the number of people who are responsible for the demise of AA is neglible in comparison to the number of honest and hardworking AA auditors.
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Summary: From another Ex-Andersen Person
Review: The book provides an indepth analysis regarding the real story behind the inner workings at Arthur Andersen. As a former Andersen employee, I was still searching for answers as to what went wrong and couldn't continue carrying the company line of "we did nothing wrong." Sure, we all didn't work at Enron or Worldcom, but her perspective forced me to question the ethics and driving forces (both historical and current)behind what really did happen. In fact, once you read the book and abstract yourself from your own personal experiences and convictions regarding AA, you'll start to say "Yeah, we were greedy and the constant struggle to sell more and more work caused us to neglect the core reason we existed- to protect the investing public." The book explains things such as the infamous inner battles fought among offices for billable time. The weird implications for our astronomical rates and associated PFAs. The inside scope on many of the partner meetings that we never got to attend- much less hear about. The book does a wonderful job of explaining the historical, political, and current events that unfolded to lead to Enron and World Com. I'm sure many of your experiences will be similiar to the authors. However, she neglected an important component of what made Andersen so great. For the most part, the people from Staff to Manager were intelligent, personable, driven, and natural leaders. It's something I haven't been able to replace in my current position and frankly don't think it will happen again. It's ashame that we had such poor leadership and that we lost sight, as a Firm,of our ultimate purpose- to protect the public via real AUDITS and not "business" audits!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting read from a bitter insider.
Review: The Good: Great examples of ethical quandries facing those in registered companies, consulting groups and public auditing firms. It reads like a novel, entertaining to those with an interest in corporate culture and a short attention span. It also provides a great overview of the other literature written about the core topic--This might be a great first week assignment in a class called "The Fall of Arthur Andersen".
The Bad: Tends to be a bit preachy, self-righteous, apologetic and hypocritical--often all at once. It skips over a lot of relevant details, tends to get a little repetitive and needs to be read with a cynical eye if your purpose is to gather "the truth" about Arthur Andersen.
The Ugly: Everything in the book is perfectly plausible, which is scary. While Toffler tends to betray herself on the way to a "lesson", it is best used as an example of what not to do and what to look out for, rather than a chronicle of what happened. If you're looking for an intro into the accounting world, you should probably look elsewhere--almost any of the books written that Toffler references.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting book, could be better
Review: This is an interesting recount of how the Arthur Andersen corporate culture led to the risk-taking and lack of diligence in producing accurate and honest audits, that resulted in the downfall of not only Arthur Andersen, but many of its clients, and incredible losses in those public companies' shareholders and employees.
Although not billed as such, the book is largely the memoir of the author's time at Arthur Andersen, filled in with pre- and post-history. As a memoir, it's lacking in details. The author was seduced by her large salary. Well, how large was it? Was it $200,000, or $2,000,000? She won't say. After preaching about the importance of an accounting firm's need to be independent of its clients, she mentions in passing that her husband is/was the executive director of an Andersen client. WHILE she was a partner at Andersen? She doesn't say, as she doesn't mention the possible conflict of interest.
The most interesting aspect of the book is its case study of how Andersen's own structure was set up to reward corporate infighting, extreme territorialism, poor service to clients, overcharging of clients, risk-taking, and lack of long-term planning. No client got both good service AND a fair price, some clients got neither. The firm became so fixated on its revenue that anything was done to make a big client, such as Enron, happy. "Keep the client happy, no matter what the consequences." She concludes that a defective corporate "cultural practice" can shape the behavior of its employees.
The book's several chapters take several "runs" at the same events, so the chronology is a bit mixed, especially for those of us who don't date events by who was SEC head at the time. A timeline would have been helpful, as would a few photographs, or even drawings. She writes at length about the significance of the different Andersen logos, and the geography and layouts of its campuses through Andersen's history -- why not show them to the reader?
The book would have been a great venue to provide a brief examination of what exactly Enron did wrong; however, Toffler's account of Enron's wrongdoing is less than you'll find in a detailed newspaper article. There's also a blooper early on when she describes the "date-stamping" of papers to prepare for litigation. The term is really "Bates stamping," and refers to the Bates stamp machine, which sequentially numbers sheets of paper.
The book is a moderately quick read, a bit too wordy in places, not wordy enough in others -- worth picking up at the library.
Rating:
Summary: Physician, heal thyself...
Review: This is an odd book, because it's actually two separate books in one cover. The first book, which is essentially a short history of the rise and fall of Arthur Andersen, was no doubt written by the ghostwriter, Jennifer Reingold, and is actually fairly informative. This is the part that gets the three stars - not great by any means, but at least informative. The second book is interspersed with the first, and purports to be a scathing indictment of the culture of Arthur Andersen, a respected American institution that was subverted and destroyed by arrogance and greed. It's easy to read a lot into this story, since it's really just the current American business ethic in microcosm. Nothing matters here but greed and taking pleasure in stepping in the other guy's face. What's interesting here is the fact that Barbara Toffler, who clearly considers herself to be an "ethics expert", openly confesses that she was just as ruthless and greedy as everyone else at Andersen. But the reader is left wondering if she ever really quite gets it - does she understand she's just as morally culpable as the Andersen partners she eviscerates? She certainly doesn't seem to be too troubled by her own long list of questionable actions, in any case. The old joke about the definition of "chutzpah" being a person who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan gets an update here: an unethical peddlar of "ethical services" who turns a quick buck by selling her story. You might feel like taking a shower after you finish this one.
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