Wall Street/1987

Introduction

This is an ethical review of film Wall Street (Stone and Weiser). It examines ethical dilemmas Bud Fox faced and what made him vulnerable to crossing ethical line, as well as what factors led to Fox's attempt to repair ethical breach. It examines Gordon Gecko's thoughts on the person's vulnerability to making an ethical breach and how this related to Bud Fox. Finally, it will take the look at factors in film that relate to Enron and WorldCom cases. (Stone P.23)

Discussion and Analysis

The movie "Wall road" is about Bud Fox, an ambitious rookie stockbroker and Gordon Gekko, an hard-hitting and ruthless Wall road power player. Bud Fox spends the lot of time and effort trying to become part of Gordon Gekko's inner circle. Once he succeeds in doing so, Bud's life moves into fast lane, the fancy apartment, money, power and the hot new girlfriend. As time goes by, Gekko makes more and more unethical and illegal demands with final straw being takeover and dismantling of Bluestar Airlines where Bud's father works. As should happen in all good movies, Bud Fox then comes up with the plan to make things right. (Donaldson P.12)

Before we can determine ethical dilemmas Bud faced we need to understand what makes an ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemmas happen because of the conflict between rightness or wrongness of actions and goodness or badness of consequences of actions. An ethical dilemma occurs when it appears the wrong action will produce the perceived good end, or when the good action will produce the wrong end. There is an conclusion that we really believe we want or don't want. Bud Fox was confronted with the number of ethical dilemmas throughout movie. (Donaldson P.12)

Bud desperately wanted to be part of Gekko's inner circle, but what he had to do was against principles, or values he grew up with and believed in. He wanted success that Gekko offered, but he also knew that using inside information that he had obtained from his father about Bluestar airlines was both illegal and wrong. (Stone P.23)

Asecond ethical dilemma was propelled by pressure at his firm connected with his poor financial situation. The sales manager, Harold Salt, was really on him about not producing, and in fact told him that he would have to make up the loss with his own money. Bud wanted to do business right way, but he was always broke and barely ...