Gordon Gekko Was the Villain. So Why Did a Generation Want to Be Him?
The Gordon Gekko Effect: The Role of Culture in the Financial Industry [pdf]
Andrew W. Lo of MIT Sloan examines how corporate culture spreads like an epidemic, using the fictional Gordon Gekko from Oliver Stone's Wall Street as a case study. Though Gekko is the film's villain and his famous "greed is good" speech was lifted from a real convict's words, countless young people still chose finance careers to emulate him. Lo argues that leadership, group composition, and environment transmit values—sometimes toxic ones—making financial misconduct more likely.
What makes this phenomenon truly astonishing is that Gekko is not the hero of Wall Street—he is, in fact, the villain.