Academic

Big Business in Corporate Culture: Are there no good guys (or gals)?

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

On Friday I participated in a conference at GW Business School entitled Corporate Governance and the Vision of the Firm, which, as the title suggest, focused on the aim of the corporation and ways in which the corporation can better respond to issues of ethics, misbehavior, and even social ills.  A lot of very interesting conversations came out of the conference.  Interestingly, one person noted that one of the challenges of reforming the corporation is that corporate culture too often portrays business in an extremely negative light.   That is, big business is often portrayed as entities driven by greed that will pursue profit without boundaries (ethical, legal, or otherwise).  As a result, whether it is a movie that focuses solely on a particular company or a show that seems to have some other focus, but references a business in some manner, such entities don't usually come out smelling like roses.  Of course, given recent corporate misdeeds, it is little wonder that businesses do not get to be the good guys in the story.  But one person noted that he could not think of a movie that portrayed business in a good light.  Perhaps it is all a matter of interpretation, but (in keeping with our movie theme) I wondered if our Glom readers had any ideas on this point.  Is there no movie in which big business gets to be the saint or at least not the sinner?

Full post as published by Conglomerate on February 22, 2010 (boomark / email).