CSR - Greed is Good

Businesses exist to make money. The pursuit of profit is a noble cause. Gentlemen - greed is good. It must be - Michael Douglas says so…

Michael Douglas won an Oscar playing a fictional character called Gordon Gekko - main antagonist of the 1987 film Wall Street who appeared again in the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The character of Gekko was said to be loosely based on a real-life Wall Street trader called Ivan Boesky. Gekko’s “Greed is Good” speech in the film has come to be associated with one side of the corporate social responsibility debate. It would make a stimulating introduction to the topic for students, though it is worth pointing out that the speech (and Gekko character) are really figments of scriptwriter’s imaginations!

The full text of the Gekko speech is as follows:

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A” [source Wikipedia]