2. Learning & Training Resources

Films & Eye-witness reports

The Informant (2009)
Mark Whitacre has worked for lysine developing company ADM for many years and has even found his way into upper management. But nothing has prepared him for the job he is about to undertake - being a spy for the FBI. Unwillingly pressured into working as an informant against the illegal price-fixing activities of his company, Whitacre gradually adopts the idea that he's a true secret agent. But as his incessant lies keep piling up, his world begins crashing down around him.

Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room (2005)
Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a multidimensional study of one of the biggest business scandals in American history. The chronicle takes a look at one of the greatest corporate disasters in history, in which top executives from the 7th largest company in this country walked away with over one billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing. The film features insider accounts and rare corporate audio and video tapes that reveal colossal personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the utter moral vacuum that posed as corporate philosophy.

The Corporation (2004)        
A documentary on the global impact of large organisations. It treats them as a patient undergoing psychoanalysis and decides that they are psychopaths. The distributors recommend that people for discussion groups to view and discuss the film.

Thank you for smoking (2006)
Satirical comedy, follows the machinations of Big Tobacco's chief spokesman, Nick Naylor, who spins on behalf of cigarettes while trying to remain a role model for his twelve-year-old son. (IMDB)

Blood Diamond (2006)
The title refers to diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance the conflicts and profit the warlords and the diamond companies across the world. Against this backdrop, the film tells the story of the intersecting lives of an ex-mercenary from Zimbabwe, a fisherman from Sierra Leone, and an American reporter.

The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Corporate audio and videotapes tell the inside story of the scandal involving Enron’s manipulation of California's energy supply and how its executives wrung a billion dollars out of the resulting crisis (IMDB).

Wal-Mart: The high cost of low price (2005)
A feature length documentary that investigates the retail giant's impact on families and American values.

Constant Gardener (2005)
This is the story of a British diplomat who in investigating his activist’s wife’s murder in Kenya uncovers a conspiracy involving government officials and a pharmaceutical company.

Super Size Me (2004) 
The film in which the film maker decides to live for a month on the best deals that McDonalds have to offer. It raises the question of people's individual responsibility for their diets and when fast food corporations may persuade people to eat unhealthily.

Work hard, play hard (2004)
The story of a young French business school graduate whose first assignment is to audit a company in the French provinces, in preparation for a takeover. He soon realizes that this will mean downsizing the company, which causes a crisis of conscience in him.

Erin Brockovich (2000)
The true story of a legal clerk who brings a case against a company in California which had contaminated local drinking water.

The Insider (1999)
This film stars Russell Crowe as an employee in the tobacco industry who breaks the confidentiality clause he has agreed with his employer.

Rogue Trader (1999)
The true story of Nick Leeson, a Barings Bank trader, who unbeknownst to his employers, was gambling with company money. His staggering losses force Barings into bankruptcy.

Roger and Me (1989)  
This was Michael Moore's first expose of corporate America. It is the story of the decline of his home town of Flint Michigan after general Motors closed its factories there.

Wall Street (1987)
"Greed is good' - A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider whom takes the youth under his wing. (IMDB)

More films on
www.ethicsinfilm.com/

Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower (2008), by Cynthia Cooper, former Vice President WorldCom (John Wiley and Sons)