Gordon Gekko's leadership style and organizational culture in Wall Street

¶ … leadership problems presented in the film? Refer to the models of leadership from organization behavior.

The seductive appeal of Gordon Gekko's credo "greed is good" has proven so persuasive with audiences that it is easy to forget about the organizational problems his leadership style creates for Wall Street firms. Gekko's autocratic yet ethically defiant mode of leadership creates a cult of personality around the man, without advancing the interests of any particular permanent business organization. Rather than an organization that builds upon past successes to create models for the future, the type of organization portrayed led by Gekko instead completely revolves around Gekko's charismatic personality. His whole world revolves around his immediate needs and the system of rewards he seeks, in terms of making money. This creates a rapacious organizational structure around him, a structure that has little sense of loyalty to anything other than Gekko's autocratic leadership style of charisma and the individual employee's sense of self and self-aggrandizement through financial gain.

Question2

How does Gekko exert power and influence over others?

Gekko's influence can even be seen in the power his rapaciousness has in the eyes of audience members, who thrill at his utter lack of ethics. By refusing to pay lip service to morality, and exerting tremendous power, the man creates a negative personal example for others around him. His strength of conviction in money and greed makes his behavior seem okay, even normal to Bud. As an example of success, Gekko holds his life out as a template for others to follow, and they do, to their ultimate destruction. Thus Gekko is, if nothing else, an example of the power of a leader to set the tone for an organization.

Question 3

What are the ethical problems of the case?

Insider trading, profiting off of secret knowledge unobtainable to the public drives the plot of the film. Also, even from the beginning of the film, Bud's ethics present a problem of divided loyalties. By day, Fox works for a conventional Wall Street firm as a stockbroker. Although this firm is primarily focused on making money, it at least attempts to adhere to the letter of the law, a fact that Bud is well aware of -- but he still engages in his own, after-hours work, in the hopes of making even more money. This is how he meets Gekko.

Thus, the central ethical dilemma Bud has to face, is to whom does he owe loyalty to, as an employee? To the firm who hired him? To his own skin -- after all, the nature of the stock brokering trade is a fairly self-interested one, and not committed to a higher moral good? Or to Gekko? There is also the larger dilemma of how simply making money may or may not be enough, in terms of one's life path -- Gekko, making money off of money seems like a hollow and empty shell of a man, when his pursuit of greed for no real reason is unmasked.

Question 4