PLAGIARISMWhat is it Whose Responsibility is It Wha.docx

PLAGIARISM:
What is it?
Whose Responsibility is It?
What Are the Consequences?
A Brief Guide
Department of Management
CBPA, CSUSB
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CSUSB websites
Plagiarism is a Serious Problem
in Academia
“A study of almost 4,500 students at 25 schools,
suggests cheating is . . . a significant problem in
high school - 74% of the respondents admitted to
one or more instances of serious test cheating
and 72% admitted to serious cheating on written
assignments. Over half of the students admitted
they have engaged in some level of plagiarism
on written assignments using the Internet.”
Based on the research of Donald L. McCabe, Rutgers
University.
Source: “CIA Research.” Center for Academic Integrity, Duke
University, 2003

<http://academicintegrity.org/cai_research.asp>.
http://academicintegrity.org/cai_research.asp
The Student’s Responsibility
• A student should be clear that work submitted for
a grade in the class must be original work.
• It is the responsibility of the student to become
fully acquainted with what constitutes
plagiarism.
• A student can check his/her writing in
Turnitin.com to see whether material shows us
that he/she may have advertently or unknowingly
used that is not their own. (However, it is up to
the instructor to determine plagiarized material )
• The student must correct the error with an
appropriate citation.
Instructor’s Responsibility
The Instructor is responsible for drawing a
conclusion regarding whether the amount of
improperly attributed or unattributed material
is so significant that intent may be presumed.
Excuses Won’t Work

The
teacher
treated me
unfairly,
so I feel
O.K. doing
it!
My job takes up too
much time, plus I am a
caregiver to my younger siblings
My classmates
Are going to
Berkeley
& I want to go
Too!
Students sometimes claim
“Accidental” or “Unintentional Plagiarism”--
What is This?
• Not knowing how/when to cite sources
• Plagiarism vs. paraphrasing
• Careless paraphrasing

• Uncertainty over what is a fact or common
knowledge
• Not knowing what constitutes research
• Quoting excessively
• Different view of plagiarism based on cultural
background
• NOTE: It is the responsibility of the student to become
fully acquainted with what constitutes plagiarism
Disciplinary Consequences
• See pages 53-54, “Plagiarism and Cheating”
CSUSB University Catalog/Bulletin for
violations and consequences.
Pay Attention to Avoiding Even the
Appearance of Plagiarism
WHAT IS PLAGIARISM?: It is use of the following
without giving credit to:
extractions from another’s work;
hat is not in the realm of common

knowledge;
written words;
without giving credit.
NOTE: It is the responsibility of the student to become
What is Plagiarism, Contd. ?
• Plagiarism occurs when a student produces writing,
with the intention to mislead the Instructor into
thinking a piece of work, a portion of that work, or an
idea or theory is their own original thought.
• Proper scholarly procedures require that, at a
minimum, all quoted material be identified by
quotation marks or indentation on the page, and the
source of information and ideas, if from another’s work,
be identified and be attributed to that source.
Examples
• Some examples of Plagiarism follow

How to Recognize Unacceptable and
Acceptable Paraphrases
“Here’s the ORIGINAL text, from page 1 of Lizzie Borden: A
Case Book of
Family and Crime in the 1890s by Joyce Williams et al.:
• The rise of industry, the growth of cities, and the expansion of
the
population were the three great developments of late nineteenth
century
American history. As new, larger, steam-powered factories
became a
feature of the American landscape in the East, they transformed
farm
hands into industrial laborers, and provided jobs for a rising
tide of
immigrants. With industry came urbanization the growth of
large cities
(like Fall River, Massachusetts, where the Bordens lived) which
became
the centers of production as well as of commerce and trade.
Here’s an UNACCEPTABLE paraphrase that is plagiarism:
• The increase of industry, the growth of cities, and the
explosion of the
population were three large factors of nineteenth century
America. As
steam-driven companies became more visible in the eastern part
of the
country, they changed farm hands into factory workers and
provided jobs
for the large wave of immigrants. With industry came the
growth of large

cities like Fall River where the Bordens lived which turned into
centers of
commerce and trade as well as production.”
This example is taken from Indiana University’s Testing quoted
from Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct By
action of the University Faculty Council (April 12, 2005) and
the Trustees of Indiana University (June 24, 2005).)
Why Might this Passage Constitute
Plagiarism?
“This is a clear example of plagiarism because the
writer has:
1) Failed to write in his/her own words, and has merely
changed around a few words and phrases, or
changed the order of the original’s sentences.
2) the writer has failed to cite a source for any of the
ideas or facts.”
from Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct, By
action of the University
Faculty Council (April 12, 2005) and the Trustees of Indiana
University (June 24, 2005).)
What is an Acceptable Paraphrase?
“Here is an example of an acceptable paraphrase:
Fall River, where the Borden family lived, was typical of

northeastern industrial cities of the
nineteenth century. Steam-powered production had shifted labor
from agriculture to
manufacturing, and as immigrants arrived in the US, they found
work in these new factories. As a
result, populations grew, and large urban areas arose. Fall River
was one of these manufacturing
and commercial centers (Williams 1).
Reasons for this passage being acceptable:
• This is acceptable paraphrasing because the writer:
• accurately relays the information in the original
uses her own words.
• lets her reader know the source of her information.
Another example of quotation and paraphrase used together,
which is also ACCEPTABLE:
Fall River, where the Borden family lived, was typical of
northeastern industrial cities of the
nineteenth century. As steam-powered production shifted labor
from agriculture to manufacturing,
the demand for workers "transformed farm hands into industrial
laborers," and created jobs for
immigrants. In turn, growing populations increased the size of
urban areas. Fall River was one of
these hubs "which became the centers of production as well as
of commerce and trade" (Williams
1).”
from Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and ConductBy
action of the University Faculty
Council (April 12, 2005) and the Trustees of Indiana University
(June 24, 2005).)

Is This Plagiarism?
You read:
“Nineteen percent of full-time freshmen say they
spend only 1 to 5 hours per week preparing for
classes…”
You write:
Nineteen percent of full-time freshmen say they
spend only 1 to 5 hours per week preparing for
classes.
From: Young, Jeffrey R. Homework? What Homework?
Chronicle of Higher
Education, 49 (15).12/6/2002.
Is this Plagiarism?
You read:
"Students are studying about one-third as much as
faculty say they ought to, to do well," said George
D. Kuh, director of the survey and a professor of
higher education at Indiana University at
Bloomington.
You write:
Most students spend about one-third as much time
studying as faculty say they should.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 49
(15).12/6/2002

Is This Plagiarism?
You read:
"Students are studying about one-third as much as faculty
say they ought to, to do well," said George D. Kuh,
director of the survey and a professor of higher education
at Indiana University at Bloomington.
You write:
According to George D. Kuh, Indiana University at
Bloomington, students study about one-third of the time
that is expected
Chronicle of Higher
Education, 49 (15).12/6/2002
Is this Plagiarism?
You read:
“The tip given most consistently by professors
and college officials is that students should
simply do their homework. The most commonly
prescribed amount is at least two hours of class
preparation for every hour spent in the
classroom…”
You write:
College students should do their homework.

Chronicle
of Higher Education, 49 (15).12/6/2002
No! As Long as you have included the Young
article in your reference list you have cited
properly.
Is this Plagiarism?
You read:
“The tip given most consistently by professors
and college officials is that students should
simply do their homework. The most commonly
prescribed amount is at least two hours of class
preparation for every hour spent in the
classroom…”
You write:
College students should do their homework.
Chronicle of Higher
Education, 49 (15).12/6/2002
No! Commonly known facts or
ideas do not have to be cited.
(Can you find this information in
at least five sources?)
Audio-Visual Information
• Plagiarism and Audio-Visual Information

• Copying graphics , pictures or other visual or
audio information from an Internet site or
from a printed source should be cited in the
same way you cite plain text.
Using Images
Cite the Source of the
Image you Are Placing
onto Your Paper
Source for Picture: Gray wolf (Canis lupus).
© Jeff Lepore/Photo Researchers
Wolf. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 31,
2004, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
<http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=79400>
Should we or shouldn’t we protect
the gray wolf?
By Ima Lamb
Eng 110
Apr. 1, 2004
Your Title Page
Source for this slide:

Young, Jeffrey R., Homework? What Homework?
Chronicle of Higher Education, 49 (15).12/6/2002.
http://search.eb.com/eb/article?eu=79400
Step-by-Step Approach
to Avoid Plagiarism
• 1. Put in quotations everything that comes directly
from the text, and give the text reference.
• 2. Paraphrase, but be sure you are not just
rearranging or replacing a few words. Try this tactic:
close the textbook so you can’t see any of it. Write
out the idea in your own words. Cite your source
• 3. Check your paraphrase against the original text to
be sure you have not accidentally used the same
phrases or words, and that the information is
accurate.
• NOTE: It is the responsibility of the student to become fully
acquainted with what constitutes plagiarism
What is Common Knowledge?
places and are likely to be known by a lot of people.
Example: Barack Obama was elected President of the United
States in 2009. This is generally known information. You do
not need to document this fact.

known and ideas that interpret facts.
Example: According Jay M. Shafritz, in Introducing Public
Administration, public administration is about law in
action, as well as an essay contest. The idea that public
administration requires good writing and analytical skills is
an interpretation. Thus, a citation of Professor Shafritz’
work is necessary.
Quotations & Paraphrasing
• “Quotation: using someone’s words. When you quote, place
the passage you are using in quotation marks, and document
the source according to a standard documentation style.
• The following example uses the Modern Language
Association’s style:
• Example: According to Peter S. Pritchard in USA Today,
“Public
schools need reform but they’re irreplaceable in teaching all
the nation’s young” (14).
• Paraphrase: using someone’s ideas, but putting them in your
own words. This is probably the skill you will use most when
incorporating sources into your writing. Although you use your
own words
to paraphrase, you must still acknowledge the source of the
information.”
Note: Produced by Writing Tutorial Services, Indiana
University, Bloomington, IN, n/date.

Some Funny Things May Happen
When you Plagiarize—But Plagiarism
is NO Laughing Matter
‘Margin Call’: Using Film to Explore Behavioural Aspects
of the Financial Crisis
Andrea Werner
Received: 22 November 2012 / Accepted: 17 June 2013 /
Published online: 26 June 2013
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract The aim of this article is to show how the
critically acclaimed and award winning film Margin Call
may be used in business ethics teaching. Set in a fictional
investment bank at the dawn of the financial crisis, the film
zooms in on the motivations and decision-making of peo-
ple who had much to lose from the crash of the hitherto
very profitable mortgage-backed securities market. The
film offers rich material for analysis of behaviours that

contributed to the crisis. The article will set out topics for
classroom discussion, including the impact of incentives
and power structures, contextual factors that distance
people from the consequences of their actions, and con-
siderations of how the banking industry may be
transformed.
Keywords Financial crisis � Film � Teaching �
Descriptive business ethics � Rationalisations
Introduction
There are few events that have had such profound effects
on the economy and society at large in recent years as the
financial crisis, which forced governments to bail out banks
that were ‘too big to fail’, and which, in turn, led to mas-
sive national debts and affected governments’ ability to
provide social welfare and stimulate their economies. As
the world has been watching the financial crisis and its
aftermath unfold, one could not help but wonder how this
crisis was allowed to happen.
Numerous books (e.g. Mason 2009; Barth 2009; Stiglitz

2010) and documentary films such as Inside Job (Biktim-
irov and Cyr 2012) have been attending to this question.
They map out the complex interactions between global
structural imbalances with regards to trade, saving and
investment and government debt; a deregulated financial
market; low interest rates and the availability of cheap
credit; the development of new financial instruments
enabling the securitisation of risk and thus allowing for the
pushing of subprime loans and mortgages; a subsequent
increase in banks’ leverage; credit agencies’ failure to
appropriately rate the risk of securitised investment prod-
ucts involving subprime mortgages; a failure to predict the
end of the housing bubble; and the banks’ short-term bonus
culture.
The critically acclaimed and award winning film Margin
Call—written and directed by J. C. Chandor and released
in late 2011 (www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/)—paints a
fascinating complementary portrait of the financial crisis.

The film zooms in on the inner workings of a fictional
investment bank at the dawn of the financial crisis that had
much to lose from the impending crash of the hitherto very
profitable mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market. Fol-
lowing a young risk analyst’s discovery that the bank is
heading for substantial losses, the film traces the decisions
made by the banks’ managers that culminate in the ‘call’ to
sell off the bank’s toxic assets before everyone else does.
The film’s focus on motivations, behaviours and rational-
isations in a situation that calls for a decision that will have
highly destructive consequences for a wide range of
stakeholders makes it a powerful teaching tool for business
ethics teaching. The aim of this article is to draw out
important themes of the film that can be utilised for
teaching in general business ethics as well as in financial
ethics classes.
A. Werner (&)
Middlesex University Business School, The Burroughs,

London NW4 4BT, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
123
J Bus Ethics (2014) 122:643–654
DOI 10.1007/s10551-013-1781-4
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/
Margin Call follows a series of feature films released in
the past few decades that offer dramatised treatment of
business ethics-related topics including sexual harassment
(Disclosure [released in 1994], Nine to Five [1980]), dis-
crimination (Philadelphia [1993]), whistle-blowing (The
Insider [1999]), lobbying (Thank you for Smoking [2005])
and human rights abuses by corporations in third world
countries (e.g. The Constant Gardener [2005]).
Margin Call can be regarded as a successor to those
films that have depicted the life-worlds of salesmen (e.g.
Glengarry Glenn Ross [1992], Death of a Salesman [1985])
and financiers (e.g. Wall Street [1987], Other People’s

Money [1991]). In fact, observers (http://www.imdb.com/
title/tt1615147/reviews) have described Margin Call as an
amalgamation of Glengarry Glenn Ross, which uses an
ensemble cast to depict the morally ambiguous and soul-
destroying experience of real-estate salespeople selling
bogus land deals, and Wall Street, which, starring Michael
Douglas as ruthless investor Gordon Gekko, introduces the
audience to the aggressive, and often illegal, tactics in the
world of high finance in the 1980s. Margin Call takes place
in a similar yet updated context as Wall Street—the 2000s
financial crisis—but by using an ensemble cast as in
Glengarry Glenn Ross rather than focusing on only one or
two central figures, the film draws out the range of tensions
that a bank’s employees and managers at different levels of
its organisational hierarchy experience (see Hassard and
Buchanan 2009).
Full-length films—both feature and documentary—have
increasingly been recognised as an effective teaching tool

in management education. They help bring to life man-
agement topics, and abstract ideas, concepts and theories
related to the workings of organisations (Huczynski and
Buchanan 2004; Hassard and Buchanan 2009; Berger and
Pratt 1998). Feature films in particular offer a more dra-
matic, engaging, motivating and memorable experience
than conventional classroom methods (Hassard and
Buchanan 2009; Hassard and Holliday 1998), not least
because of their ability to depict emotional aspects of
experience (Hassard and Buchanan 2009). They provide a
window into worlds that are normally inaccessible to stu-
dents as well as offer opportunities for ‘naturalistic gen-
eralisation’, that is, discussion on how the film could be
relevant to their own life-worlds (ibid).
It is important, however, to be aware that film narratives
are highly selective (Hassard and Buchanan 2009) and are
their creators’ (subjective) accounts of reality (Huczynski
and Buchanan 2004). This may leave the film open to

criticism of depicting an unrealistic, exaggerated or sen-
sationalised view of the world, and may leave audiences
vulnerable to manipulation (Hassard and Buchanan 2009).
Brewis (1998), for example, argues that the depiction of
sexual harassment in Disclosure (with a highly eroticised
woman cast as the harasser) could be seen to ‘generate
understandings that attribute at least some blame to the
recipient of harassment’. Denzin (1991), similarly, criti-
cises Wall Street for failing to interrogate the inner market
structures that produce unethical commodity trading, which
leaves the ethical contradictions that lie at the heart of
(deregulated) market capitalism unexamined and thus
reduces the film’s narrative to a simplistic morality tale.
1
Margin Call tells a gripping story and features a cast of
well-known film stars, which should motivate students to
engage with the film’s topics, especially because the story
is mainly told from the perspective of younger bankers.
The film may be criticised, however, for the fact that it

simplifies events by cramming them into a much shorter
time space than would have been the case in real life (for a
more accurate account of how events may have unfolded
for an investment bank in the financial crisis a television
serial might have been more appropriate). Also, the plau-
sibility of the narrative may be somewhat called into
question by making a young, lower level member of staff
the person who triggers off events. Finally, being primarily
a film that focuses on people and their interactions with
each other, Margin Call does not explain the broader
context of the financial crisis and only gives brief glimpses
into how banks were implicated in the crisis through the
development and trade of securitised investment products
and their active pushing of subprime mortgages.
Critics and reviewers have found, however, that the film
presents an authentic depiction of behaviours within
investment banks (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/
reviews), which was aided by the fact that the film wri-

ter–director’s father used to be an executive at Merrill
Lynch (Turan 2011). The film thus provides valuable
material from which lessons about human decision-making
and behaviours within corporate contexts can be drawn.
Margin Call also overcomes the limitations of Wall Street
that Denzin (1991) pointed out (see above). Unlike Wall
Street, the film does not simply focus on characters that
some might call ‘ruthless’, ‘greedy’ or ‘bad apples’, rather,
it provides insights into the complexity of human motiva-
tions and how they might be influenced by organisational
priorities, structures and culture. The film also critically
examines the links between the behaviour and practices of
investment banks and wider societal values and priorities,
thus telling a more complex story than Wall Street.
This article contributes to the growing number of
scholarly articles on teaching (business) ethics with films.
1
A slightly different view regarding the film’s merits is provided
by

MacDonald (2010b) and Shaw (2012), who argue that Gordon
Gekko’s ‘greed is good’ speech at an AGM is a useful focus for
discussions around effective corporate governance (MacDonald
2010b) and the shareholder versus the stakeholder view of the
corporation (Shaw 2012).
644 A. Werner
123
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/reviews
One set of these articles report on empirical research,
carried out to determine the instructional value of specific
films among their students (e.g. Berger and Pratt 1998) or
the change in students’ moral attitudes after exposure to a
film on a business ethics theme (e.g. Cox et al. 2009). In
another set of articles, authors set out specific suggestions
for how to use a film for teaching, by outlining lesson plans
(e.g. van Es 2003) or topics and questions for classroom

discussions (e.g. Chan et al. 1995; Shaw 2004; Champoux
2006; Biktimirov and Cyr 2012). Most of these articles are
underpinned by the application of ethical theory.
This article contributes to the second set of articles, as it
sets out a range of topics that students may explore with the
help of the film in teaching sessions. But in contrast to the
articles mentioned above, this article draws mainly on
descriptive business ethics and management literature,
which has explored how contextual factors influence
behaviour and rationalisations of organisational members
and interact with their motivations (e.g. Jackall 1988; Vre-
denburgh and Brender 1998; James 2000; Anand et al. 2004;
Heath 2008; Roberts 2001a, b), in addition to drawing on
some normative concepts (e.g. social contract theory, pro-
fessionalism) and ideas. In particular, the article will explore:
the role of money both as an incentive and as a general
motivation for people’s behaviours and actions; the impact
of power structures in organisations on their employees;

contextual factors that distance people from the conse-
quences of their actions including the rationalisations that
people employ to justify their morally ambiguous decisions;
as well as considerations of how the banking industry may be
‘transformed’. The aims will be to develop students’ critical
awareness of these topics and issues, and to stimulate ‘moral
imagination’ (Cox et al. 2009), which includes to imagine
solutions that change the ‘rule of the game’ (Werhane 1999).
The ultimate aim is that students will develop reflective skills
with regards to their own (current and future) organisational
context and their own priorities.
The article is structured as follows. Following a brief note
on how to use the film in a classroom setting, a brief synopsis
and a description of the main characters are provided. The
following sections will set out each of above-mentioned top-
ics. Each section will include a list of scenes in the film rele-
vant to the topic, reference to relevant conceptual and
theoretical literature, and a set of discussion questions or brief

discussion outlines. A conclusion section will summarise the
possibilities that the film offers for business ethics teaching.
Using Margin Call for Teaching
The film may be used across a range of business ethics
classes, from general classes focusing on descriptive busi-
ness ethics, that is, the exploration of influences on
individual and corporate decision-making and behaviour in
(profit-seeking) organisations (Crane and Matten 2010) to
classes teaching ethics in finance. Tutors may choose which
of the topics set out in this article fit with their respective
curricula. Even though the article presents the topics in a
particular sequence, this should by no means imply that
tutors have to follow this sequence as well. Rather, tutors
might want to mix and match the topics according to what
content they want to cover in their classes.
The film is suitable teaching material at both under-
graduate and postgraduate level, but it might work partic-
ularly well with MBA students who bring their experience

of their own workplace to the teaching sessions.
It is recommended that the students watch the whole
film in class, followed up by discussion. Due to its length
(1 h 48 min), this may only be feasible within longer
teaching sessions, for example, in block teaching. Alter-
natively, students may be asked to watch the film in their
own time and reflect on the film’s content in subsequent
teaching sessions, in which bite-sized clips from the film
(as set out in the topic sections) could be shown.
2
Sequences from different parts of the film often belong to
one topic; therefore, to aid the presentation of bite-sized
clips, each of the following sections contains information
on where the relevant film segments can be found.
The attention of the students should be on the behav-
iours and decision-making of the main characters and they
should not get too distracted by the technical details of how
MBS investment products worked. In order for them to

understand what is at stake in the film and to understand the
concepts of MBS backed securities and leverage, students
might be asked to watch the Crisis of Credit (http://
crisisofcredit.com/) video clip (Jarvis 2012) in preparation
for teaching sessions, which should provide them with the
necessary background information. Students may also be
recommended to read Paul Mason’s book Meltdown (2009)
or watch the film Inside Job (Biktimirov and Cyr 2012) if
they want to gain more in-depth understanding of the
mechanics of the financial crisis.
Synopsis and Main Characters
The story of the film is set in 2007 at the dawn of the
financial crisis and focuses on an un-named investment
bank (even though observers have pointed out that the
events depicted in the film are loosely based on what was
2
A script of the film (http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/Images/web/
template/awards/2012/scripts/margincall.pdf (Chandor 2010)) is
available on the internet. Even though in the actual film parts of

the
dialogue are worded slightly differently and some of the scenes
have
been deleted or are shown in a slightly different order, the
script may
be helpful for students to study the film more in-depth.
‘Margin Call’ 645
123
http://crisisofcredit.com/
http://crisisofcredit.com/
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/Images/web/template/awards/201
2/scripts/margincall.pdf
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/Images/web/template/awards/201
2/scripts/margincall.pdf
happening at Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs at the
time). The tightly scripted narrative unfolds over a period
of about 24 h, with most of the drama taking place during
the night. The film opens with a scene in which the Head of
Risk Management is being fired as part of a corporate
downsizing exercise. On leaving the building, he hands a
USB stick to Peter Sullivan, a young senior risk analyst,

asking him to take a look at a new risk model that he had
begun to work on. Peter discovers that because of the
changed risk environment, the equations on which
the bank’s MBS trading rest no longer work. Because of
the high leverage it has on its MBS assets, the bank is set to
lose more money than the current market capitalisation of
the firm if the assets were to decline as projected in the new
model. Peter reports his findings at once to his immediate
superiors, who, in turn, escalate this concern further up the
hierarchy. As the ‘news’ reach top-management, a decision
is made in a nightly emergency board meeting to sell off
these risky assets the following morning in a fire sale to
minimise losses, fully aware that this will cause ‘turmoil in
the markets’ and is likely to destroy the trust relationships
the company enjoys with its trading partners.
The film’s story comes alive through its main characters
and their interactions with each other, which reveal their
different motivations and concerns and prompt them to

make short ‘philosophical’ speeches related to the events
that are happening in front of their eyes. The main char-
acters are set out in Table 1.
The Impact of Money on People’s Attitudes
and Behaviours
A number of observers have commented on how banks’
practices of paying themselves and their staff huge bonuses
for deals that carried high risk, without factoring in the
possibility of large losses from those transactions, con-
tributed to the financial crisis (e.g. Stiglitz 2010, pp. 152,
279; Donaldson 2012). The film does not specifically
examine this particular problem, but money, and how it can
control and motivate people’s behaviour, is a pertinent
theme throughout the film, and may therefore be a suitable
starting point for discussion. The film focuses on both,
money as an incentive to engage employees, or make them
complicit, in morally ambiguous actions, and as a broader
motivation for human behaviour.

Much has been written about rewards and incentives in
organisations and how firms might use them effectively to
induce certain behaviours among their members (e.g.
James 2000; Carson 2003; Anand et al. 2004; Johnson et al.
2011), as monetary or other rewards help employees ‘to
resolve the ambiguity that often pervades business issues in
a manner that suits their self-interest’ (Anand et al. 2004).
Several scenes in the film illustrate how this works (whilst
they also hint at the CEO’s dependence on people
accepting these incentives for the firm’s plan to succeed).
One set of scenes focuses on the traders: the scene in which
Sam Rogers explains to the board how the traders need to
be thrown a ‘pretty big bone’ in order to go along with the
fire sale, especially as they are likely to lose their jobs
afterwards (49:40–51:45), and the scene in which he
explains to his traders how many million dollars in bonus
they will be paid if they complete the fire sale
(01:22:00–01:24:35). Another set of scenes focus on Sam

himself and his journey from a man of conscience, who
objects to the fire sale because it will kill the market
(32:50–33:30, 50:10–55:05), to his (reluctant) acceptance
of a large bonus in return for his assurance that he will
motivate the traders to sell as much of the toxic assets as
they can (01:10:22–01:12:40). The film also shows how the
firm uses money as a ‘negative’ incentive, that is, as a
threat to withhold from employees what is due to them if
they refuse to be compliant (James 2000). Eric Dale is a
case in point, as he is being threatened with the loss of his
severance package if he refuses to stay silent over the
firm’s actions, something he might find particularly diffi-
cult to accept because he is the breadwinner of his family
and owns a heavily mortgaged house in an expensive
neighbourhood (01:05:20–01:07:10, 01:09:00–01:10:20,
01:19:50–01:22:00).
Tutors may wish to discuss the following questions in
relation to above film scenes:

– Given that the firm’s senior managers believe that the
fire sale is ‘the right thing to do’, why does the firm
have to rely on incentivising (or threatening) their staff
to sell off their MBS assets? Is there a sense that a line
is being crossed here?
– To what extent would it have been feasible for the
traders to say ‘no’ to the fire sale and their bonus?
– What do you think about the size of the traders’
bonuses? Are they justified (a) in view of the cost that
their actions bring on themselves, (b) in view of the
enormous economic and societal cost of the ensuing
financial crisis?
– Looking at how Sam changes his position by accepting
his bonus, would you regard Sam a more or a less moral
person than the rest of the traders and the other
managers, and why?
– How sympathetic, and why, are you with Eric’s
decision to agree to staying silent? Does this take

away from his courageous stance he showed when
alerting senior management to the risks of their trading
model?
– Have you observed in your own workplace instances
where people were incentivised to engage in practices
646 A. Werner
123
which they otherwise would not have? What did you
think about these situations?
The film also looks at money as a motivation for people to
work in the financial industry. Seth’s obsession with how
much he and other people in the bank earn (23:15–24:15,
26:55–28:55, 57:10–58:10) and Will’s account of how he
spent the 2.5 million dollars that he earned the previous
year—which included $150,000 for a car and $76,000 on
hookers, booze and dancers (38:55–40:03)—are particular
pertinent scenes, but Peter’s admission that he left a career

in engineering because of the money that the bank offers
(31:25–32:15), and the financial situation of Sam, who is
divorced and spends thousands on his beloved dog who is
dying (11:30–11:55, 16:50–17:10, 1:34:45–1:38:20), and
of Eric, who has just bought a house for his family in an
expensive neighbourhood (1:05:20–01:06:00), also deserve
attention.
The high level of remuneration in the banking sector
may be a rather delicate subject to discuss with business
students (especially with MBA students, a number of
whom may study for their degree because it is a ticket to
future high income levels). A way into this discussion may,
however, be found by looking at psychological studies that
have investigated the link between money and happiness
and have found that there is only a limited relationship
between the two variables (e.g. Aknin et al. 2009) whilst
also looking at studies that have found that high income
might have different functions, such as being a ‘social tool’

to enhance one’s status, rather than bringing about happi-
ness (Ahuvia 2008). Studies that have found that people’s
happiness depend on how they spend their money (see
Dunn et al. 2011), for example, when they use money to
benefit others, may also enhance discussion.
Questions for discussion may include:
– Looking at the main characters in the film, how would
you answer the question ‘Does money bring
happiness’?
– What motivations other than happiness may people in
the film have for seeking to work in a high-paying
industry? To what extent can these be considered valid?
– Looking at Will’s account of how he spent his money;
does it matter what people spend their money on? Do you
believe that there are more ‘satisfying’ and ‘worthwhile’
uses of money than others? Why, why not?
Table 1 Main characters
Risk analysts

Peter Sullivan (played by
Zachary Quinto)
A 28-year-old senior risk analyst who holds a Ph.D. in
Astrophysics from MIT. He is the person who
‘discovers’ the risk to which the company is exposed in relation
to their MBS assets, but appears to be a
more neutral, detached character throughout the film
Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) A 23-year-old junior risk analyst.
He just happens to ‘be there’ when Peter shares his discovery
with his
bosses. Even though Seth is more of a by-stander, his comments
on the events that are unfolding in front of
the bank’s staff are very instructive
Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) The former Head of Risk
Management, who gets fired by the bank as part of a downsizing
exercise. He had
started developing the risk model that Peter later completes. At
a later point in the film, we learn that he
had been raising concerns in relation to the company’s MBS
trading model previously, but his concerns
appear not to have been taken seriously by his superiors
Traders
Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) Head of Trading Desk. On

discovering the massive risk the company is exposed to, Peter
Sullivan first turns
to Will Emerson, who escalates Peter’s findings further up the
hierarchy. Throughout the film, Will makes
cynical observations about himself, the bank and society at
large
Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) Head of Trading Floor. Sam has
been with the firm for more than 30 years. He appears to believe
in
professional standards such as maintaining long-term and
mutually beneficial relationships with clients and
trading partners, even though after some persuasion he,
reluctantly, agrees to go along with the fire sale
Senior Executives
Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore) The firm’s Chief Risk
Management Officer. Sarah is forced to confirm Peter’s findings
when they are
reported to her. We learn that, even though she had passed on
Eric Dale’s previous concerns about the
company’s risk exposure to top-management, she did not insist
on following up on those concerns.
Following the board’s decision to sell off the bank’s risky
assets, the CEO decides to put the blame for the
company’s crisis on her and to let her head roll

Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) He holds the post of Head of
Investment Division at the youthful age of 43. He takes the
decision to call in
the CEO to discuss the possibility of a fire sale. He also makes
sure that he will not have to take any blame
for the crisis
John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) The CEO and chairman of the board; a
towering and enigmatic figure who is keen to ensure the
survival of
the bank. He very eloquently and forcefully persuades the board
and senior traders to authorise and support
the fire sale, providing a number of rationalisations to others
(and to himself) as to why this is the right
thing to do
‘Margin Call’ 647
123
– In the scene in which Seth tells Peter how much Will
earned the previous year, Peter responds: ‘Does this
seem right to you?’ Why does Peter question the
legitimacy of Will’s—and implicitly the other bank-
ers’—income levels? Should there be an upper limit to

what people are able to earn? Why, why not?
The last question ties into the discussion how the banking
sector may be ‘transformed’, which is the focus of another
section below.
Power Structures
Even though the company’s CEO likes to portray his firm
as a ‘powerless’ player in the market, as we will see later
on, numerous scenes in the film show that the firm is able
to exert considerable power, especially over their
employees. We have seen above how the firm does this
through the use of incentives, but other scenes focus more
directly on power structures in the organisation (Johnson
et al. 2011, pp. 177–178), in particular those that show how
the firm has been handling the inconvenient news that there
might be something wrong with their MBS trading model.
An interesting figure here is Sarah Robertson, the Chief
Risk Management Officer. A number of scenes that show
exchanges between Sarah Robertson and Sam Rogers

(33:50–34:45), Jared Cohen (40:40–42:25, 55:40–57:10),
Eric Dale (01:19:50–01:22:00) and John Tuld
(59:22–1:01:35) hint at the fact that she and others had
already been aware of the problems associated with the
bank’s MBS trading before Peter’s discovery, yet chose not
to solve them, although Sarah insists to Eric that she did
pass on the concerns he had raised. Even though the
exchanges between her and Jared and her and Eric imply
that she is no more or less to blame for the crisis than the
other senior managers, she becomes the only victim in the
senior management ranks, with John Tuld announcing to
her that she will be made the ‘scapegoat’ …
As you write your paper, whenever you use words or ideas of a
source, you must document it. One of the simplest methods of
crediting sources is the Modern Language Association (MLA)
in-text system. In the text of your paper, immediately after any
quotation, paraphrase, or idea, you simply insert a parenthetical
mention of the author's last name and the page number on which
the material appears. You don't need a comma after the author's
name or an abbreviation of the word page or p. For example:
Some of the forms of cancer that researchers believe may be
treated with thalidomide are breast cancer; prostate cancer;

brain cancer; and Kaposi's sarcoma, which is cancer normally
found in AIDS patients (Burkholz 12).
The parenthetical reference tells the reader that the information
in this sentence came from page 12 of the book or article by
Burkholz that appears in the Works Cited, at the end of the
paper. The complete reference on the Works Cited page
provides all of the information readers need to locate the
original source:
Burkholz, Herbert. "Giving Thalidomide a Second Chance."
FDA Consumer Sept.-Oct. 1997: 12-14.
If the author's name is mentioned in the same sentence, it is also
acceptable to place only the page numbers in parentheses; it is
not necessary to repeat the author's name. For example,
Burkholz reports that some of the forms of cancer that
researchers believe may be treated with thalidomide are breast
cancer; prostate cancer; brain cancer; and Kaposi's sarcoma,
which is cancer normally found in AIDS patients (12).
The first time an author is cited in the paper, he should be
identified by full name and claim to authority:
According to William A. Silverman, a specialist in neonatology
who has served as professor of pediatrics at Columbia
University in New York and head of intensive care at San
Francisco's Children's Hospital, thalidomide was first developed
in Germany back in 1954 as an antihistamine by a small, new
pharmaceuticals firm, Chemie Grunenthal (404).
A last name and page number in parentheses do not carry nearly
the same weight as a full name and credentials. You should save
the former for subsequent citations once the author has been
fully identified. If more than one sentence comes from the same

source, you do not need to put parentheses after each sentence.
One parenthetical citation at the end of the material from a
source is enough if it is clear from the way you introduce the
material where your ideas end and the source's begin.
If you are using more than one work by the same author, you
need to provide in the parentheses the title or a recognizable
shortened form of the title of the particular work being cited. If
the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, you should
include in parentheses the author's last name, the title, and the
page number, with a comma between the author's name and the
title. If both the author's name and the title of any work being
cited are mentioned in the sentence, the parentheses will include
only the page number. Had two works by Burkholz been listed
in the Works Cited, the first example above would have looked
like this:
Some of the forms of cancer that researchers believe may be
treated with thalidomide are breast cancer; prostate cancer;
brain cancer; and Kaposi's sarcoma, which is cancer normally
found in AIDS patients (Burkholz, "Giving" 1).
If there is more than one author, don't forget to give credit to
all. Two or three authors are acknowledged by name in the
parentheses if not in your own sentence: (Harmon, Livesy, and
Jones 23).
With four or more authors, use et al, the Latin term for and
others: (Braithwaite et al. 137).
Some sources do not name an author. To cite a work with an
unknown author, give the title, or a recognizable shortened
form, in the text of your paper. If the work does not have
numbered pages, often the case in Web pages or nonprint
sources, do not include page numbers. For example,

In some cases Sephardic Jews, "converted" under duress,
practiced Christian-ity openly and Judaism in secret until
recently ("Search for the Buried Past").
Direct quotations should always be introduced or worked into
the grammatical structure of your own sentences. Remember,
however, that you need to provide parenthetical documentation
not only for every direct quotation but also for every paraphrase
or summary. Document any words or ideas that are not your
own.
As a general rule, you cannot make any changes in a quotation.
Two exceptions are clearly marked when they occur. At times
you may use brackets to make a slight change that does not
change the meaning of the quotation. For example, a pronoun
may need to be replaced by a noun in brackets to make its
reference clear. Or a verb tense may be changed and bracketed
to make the quotation fit more smoothly into your sentence. An
ellipsis (. . .) is used when you omit a portion of the quotation
that does not change the essential meaning of the quote. You do
not need to use ellipses at the beginning or end of a direct
quotation. If the omitted portion included the end of one
sentence and the beginning of another, there should be a fourth
period (. . . .).
If a quotation is more than four typed lines long, it needs to be
handled as a block quotation. A block quotation is usually
introduced by a sentence followed by a colon. The quotation
itself is indented one inch or ten spaces from the left margin.
No quotation marks are necessary since the placement on the
page informs the reader that it is a quotation. The only
quotation marks in a block quotation would be ones copied from
the original, as in dialogue. A paragraph break within a block
quotation is indented an additional five spaces. The
parenthetical citation is the same as with a quotation run into
your text, but the period appears before the parentheses.

With print sources in particular, you will often need to cite one
work that is quoted in another or a work from an anthology. For
the former, the parenthetical documentation provides name and
page number of the source you actually used, preceded by the
words "qtd. in":
In the quest for evidence, Col. Patrick Toffler, Director of the
United States Military Office of Institutional Research, reported
that they had identified 120 physical differences. The female
soldier "is, on the average, about five inches shorter than the
male soldier, has half the upper body strength, lower aerobic
capacity and 37 percent less muscle mass" (qtd. in Owens 35).
A work in an anthology is cited parenthetically by the name of
the author of the work, not the editor of the anthology:
(Simkovich 3).
The list of Works Cited includes all material you have used to
write your research paper. This list appears at the end of your
paper and always starts on a new page. Center the title Works
Cited, double-space between the title and the first entry, and
begin your list, which should be arranged alphabetically by
author. Each entry should start at the left margin; indent all
subsequent lines of the entry five spaces. Number each page,
and double-space throughout.
Print Sources
A BOOK BY A SINGLE AUTHOR
Gubar, Susan. Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in
American Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
When you cite a book using MLA style, include the following:
1. Author

2. Title and subtitle
3. City of publication
4. Publisher
5. Date of publication
A BOOK BY TWO AUTHORS
Alderman, Ellen, and Caroline Kennedy. The Right to Privacy.
New York: Vintage, 1995. Note: This form is followed even for
two authors with the same last name.
Ehrlich, Paul, and Anne Ehrlich. Extinction: The Causes and
Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. New York:
Random, 1981.
A BOOK BY TWO OR MORE AUTHORS
Heffernan, William A., Mark Johnston, and Frank Hodgins.
Literature: Art and Artifact. San Diego: Harcourt, 1987.
If there are more than three authors, name only the first and add
"et al." (meaning "and others").
A BOOK BY A CORPORATE AUTHOR
Poets & Writers, Inc. The Writing Business: A Poets & Writers
Handbook. New York: Poets & Writers, 1985.
A WORK IN AN ANTHOLOGY
Head, Bessie. "Woman from America." Wild Women:
Contemporary Short Stories by Women Celebrating Women. Ed.
Sue Thomas. Woodstock: Overlook, 1994. 45-51.
AN INTRODUCTION, PREFACE, FOREWORD, OR
AFTERWORD

Callahan, John F. Introduction. Flying Home and Other Stories.
By Ralph Ellison. Ed. John F. Callahan. New York: Vintage,
1996. 1-9.
MATERIAL REPRINTED FROM ANOTHER SOURCE
Diffie, Whitfield, and Susan Landau. "Privacy: Protections and
Threats." Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and
Encryption. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1998. Rpt. in Elements of
Argument: A Text and Reader. Annette T. Rottenberg and
Donna Haisty Winchell. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's,
2006. 601.
A MULTIVOLUME WORK
Skotheim, Robert Allen, and Michael McGiffert, eds. Since the
Civil War. Reading: Addison, 1972. Vol. 2 of American Social
Thought: Sources and Interpretations. 2 vols. 1972.
AN EDITION OTHER THAN THE FIRST
Charters, Ann, ed. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to
Short Fiction, 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007.
A TRANSLATION
Allende, Isabel. The House of the Spirits. Trans. Magda Bogin.
New York: Knopf, 1985.
A REPUBLISHED BOOK
Weesner, Theodore. The Car Thief. 1972. New York: Vintage-
Random, 1987.
Note: The only information about original publication you need

to provide is the publication date, which appears immediately
after the title.
Management 306
The MLA System for Citing Sources
（https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UONz1sqWwM#action=s
hare）
A BOOK IN A SERIES
Eady, Cornelius. Victims of the Latest Dance Craze. Omnation
Press Dialogues on Dance Series 5. Chicago: Omnation, 1985.
AN ARTICLE FROM A DAILY NEWSPAPER
Doctorow, E. L. "Quick Cuts: The Novel Follows Film into a
World of Fewer Words." New York Times 15 Mar. 1999, sec. B:
1+.
AN ARTICLE FROM A MAGAZINE
Schulhofer, Stephen. "Unwanted Sex." Atlantic Monthly Oct.
1998: 55-66.
AN UNSIGNED EDITORIAL
"Medium, Message." Editorial. Nation 28 Mar. 1987: 383-84.
ANONYMOUS WORKS
"The March Almanac." Atlantic Monthly Mar. 1995: 20.
Citation World Atlas. Maplewood: Hammond, 1999.
AN ARTICLE FROM A JOURNAL WITH SEPARATE
PAGINATION FOR EACH ISSUE

Brewer, Derek. "The Battleground of Home: Versions of Fairy
Tales." Encounter 54.4 (1980): 52-61.
AN ARTICLE IN A JOURNAL WITH CONTINUOUS
PAGINATION THROUGHOUT THE VOLUME
McCafferty, Janey. "The Shadders Go Away." New England
Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly 9 (1987): 332-42.
Note that the issue number is not mentioned here; because the
volume has continuous pagination throughout the year, only the
volume number 9 is needed.
A REVIEW
Walker, David. Rev. of A Wave, by John Ashbery. Field 32
(1985): 63-71.
AN ARTICLE IN A REFERENCE WORK
"Bylina." The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics. Ed. Alex Prem-inger and T. V. F. Brogan. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1993.
A GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT
United States. National Endowment for the Arts. 2006 Annual
Report. Washington: Office of Public Affairs, 2007.
Frequently the Government Printing Office (GPO) is the
publisher of federal government documents.
REPORTS
Gura, Mark. The Gorgeous Mosaic Project: A Work of Art by
the Schoolchildren of the World. Teacher's packet. East

Brunswick: Children's Atelier, 1990. ERIC ED 347 257.
Kassebaum, Peter. Cultural Awareness Training Manual and
Study Guide. ERIC, 1992. ED 347 289.
The ERIC number at the end of the entry indicates that this
source is available through ERIC (Educational Resource
Information Center); some libraries have these available on
microfiche. The number indicates which report to look for.
Some ERIC documents were published elsewhere, as in the first
example. If no other publishing information is given, treat ERIC
(with no city given) as the publisher, as shown in the second
entry. Reports are also published by NTIS (National Technical
Information Service), state geological surveys, organizations,
institutes within universities, and so on and may be called
"technical reports," or "occasional papers." Be sure to include
the source and the unique report number, if given.
AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT
Leahy, Ellen. "An Investigation of the Computerization of
Information Systems in a Family Planning Program."
Unpublished master's degree project. Div. of Public Health, U
of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1990.
A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Flannery, James W. Letter. New York Times Book Review 28
Feb. 1993: 34.
PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE
Bennett, David. Letter to the author. 3 Mar. 2007.
A CARTOON

Henley, Marian. "Maxine." Cartoon. Valley Advocate 25 Feb.
1993: 39.
Electronic Sources
A WEB SITE
Fairy Tales: Origins and Evolution. Ed. Christine Daae. 12 Dec.
2007 .
Include the title if available; the author's name if available or, if
not, a generic description such as "Home page"; the sponsoring
organization or institution except in the case of commercial
sponsorship; date of access; and URL in angle brackets.
When you cite a brief article from a Web site using MLA style,
include the following:
1. Author
2. Title of work
3. Title of Web site
4. Date of publication or latest update
5. Sponsor of site
6. Date of access
7. URL
A PAGE WITHIN A WEB SITE
"Don't Zoos Contribute to the Saving of Species from
Extinction?" Animal Rights Resource Site. Envirolink Network.
14 Dec. 2007 .
When you cite an article from a database using MLA style,
include the following:
1. Author
2. Title of article

3. Title of periodical, volume and issue numbers
4. Date of publication
5. Inclusive pages
6. Name of database
7. Name of subscription service
8. Library at which you retrieved the source
9. Date of access
10. URL
A BOOK AVAILABLE ON THE WEB
Kramer, Heinrich, and James Sprenger. The Malleus
Maleficarum. Trans.
Montague Summers. New York: Dover, 1971. 14 Dec. 2007 .
In this case the book had been previously published, and
information about its original publication was included at the
site.
AN ARTICLE FROM AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL
Minow, Mary. "Filters and the Public Library: A Legal and
Policy Analysis." First Monday 2.12 (1 Dec. 1997). 28 Nov.
2007 .
MATERIAL ACCESSED THROUGH A COMPUTER SERVICE
Boynton, Robert S. "The New Intellectuals." Atlantic Monthly
Mar. 1995. Atlantic Unbound. America Online. 3 Mar. 2007.
Keyword: Atlantic.
A CD-ROM
Corcoran, Mary B. "Fairy Tale." Grolier Multimedia
Encyclopedia. CD-ROM. Dan-bury: Grolier, 1995.

AN ARTICLE FROM A FULL-TEXT DATABASE
AVAILABLE THROUGH THE WEB
Warner, Marina. "Pity the Stepmother." New York Times. 12
May 1991, late
ed.: D17. Lexis/Nexis Universe 12 Dec. 2007. .
Include the original source information and the name of the
data-base, access date, and URL.
AN ARTICLE FROM A CD-ROM FULL-TEXT DATABASE
"Tribal/DNC Donations." News from Indian Country. (Dec.
1997). Ethnic Newswatch. CD-ROM. Softline. 12 Oct. 2007.
Include the original source information and the name of the
data-base, the designation CD-ROM, the publisher of the CD-
ROM, and the electronic publication data, if available.
AN ARTICLE FROM AN ELECTRONIC REFERENCE WORK
"Folk Arts." Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14
Dec. 2007. .
A PERSONAL E-MAIL COMMUNICATION
Franz, Kenneth. "Re: Species Reintroduction." E-mail to the
author. 12 Oct. 2007.
AN E-MAIL COMMUNICATION POSTED TO A DISCUSSION
LIST
Lee, Constance. "Re: Mothers and Stepmothers." Online
posting. 10 Sept. 2007. Folklore Discussion List .

If the address of the discussion list archives is known, include
that information in angle brackets; if not, place the moderator's
e-mail address in angle brackets.
A POSTING TO A WEB FORUM
DeYoung, Chris. Online posting. 12 Dec. 2007. Issues: Gay
Rights. 14 Dec. 2007 .
Include the author, header (if any) in quotation marks, the
designation Online posting, the date of the posting, the name of
the forum, the date of access, and the URL.
A NEWSGROUP POSTING
Vining, Philip. "Zoos and Infotainment." Online posting. 16
Oct. 2007. 12 Dec. 2007. .
Include the author, header in quotation marks, the designation
Online posting, the date of posting, the date of access, and the
name of the newsgroup.
ASYNCHRONOUS COMMUNICATION
Krishnamurthi, Ashok. Online discussion of cyberlaw and the
media. "Reinventing Copyright in a Digital Environment." 25
Oct. 2007. MediaMOO. 25 Oct. 2007 .
To cite a synchronous communication from a MUD or a MOO,
include the name of the speaker, a description of the event, the
date, the forum, the date of access, and the electronic address.
Other Sources
A LECTURE

Calvino, Italo. "Right and Wrong Political Uses of Literature."
Symposium on Euro-pean Politics. Amherst College, Amherst.
25 Feb. 1976.
A FILM
The Voice of the Khalam. Prod. Loretta Pauker. Perf. Leopold
Senghor, Okara, Bi-rago Diop, Rubadiri, and Francis Parkes.
Contemporary Films/McGraw-Hill, 1971. 16 mm, 29 min.
Other pertinent information to give in film references, if
available, is the writer and director (see model for
radio/television program for style).
A TELEVISION OR RADIO PROGRAM
The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God. Narr. David
McCullough. Dir. Ken Burns and Amy Stechler Burns. Writ.
Amy Stechler Burns, Wendy Tilghman, and Tom Lewis. PBS.
WGBY, Springfield. 28 Dec. 1992.
A VIDEOTAPE
Style Wars! Videotape. Prod. Tony Silver and Henry Chalfont.
New Day Films, 1985. 69 min.
DVD
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. DVD. Prod. David
Barron and David Heyman. Warner Bros., 2007. 139 min.
A PERFORMANCE
Quitters: A Musical Celebration. By Molly Newman and
Barbara Damashek. Dir. Joyce Devlin. Musical dir. Faith Fung.
Mt. Holyoke Laboratory Theatre, South Hadley, MA. 26 Apr.

1991. Based on The Quilters: Women and Domestic Art by
Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Allen.
AN INTERVIEW
Hines, Gregory. Interview. With D. C. Denison. Boston Globe
Magazine 29 Mar. 1987: 2.
Note: An interview conducted by the author of the paper would
be documented as follows:
Hines, Gregory. Personal interview. 29 Mar. 1987.
_____________________________________________________
____
Source: Elements of Argument, Annette Rottenberg.
Management 306
How Margin Call Gets It Right About the Financial Crisis
Daniel Krauthammer, New Republic
Margin Call is the smartest movie you will ever see about the
Financial Crisis. Debuting at a time when the Occupy Wall
Street movement seeks to make caricatured villains of bankers
and much of the public puts the blame for a lagging economy
squarely on their shoulders, this movie offers an extremely
thoughtful, fair and鈥攆or that very reason鈥攗ltimately much
more powerful critique of how our financial system really
works.
It tells the story of a roughly 24-hour period at a fictional
investment bank on the eve of the 2008 financial collapse. In a
sequence of events that mirrors what really must have happened
at several real-world banks, a lowly junior analyst discovers
that his firm's dangerously high risk exposure to mortgage-
backed securities could bankrupt the entire company and alarm
bells ring right up the chain of command in an effort to avert
disaster before it's too late. By the movie's finale, that effort
has set in motion the inevitable system-wide collapse that we

are all still dealing with today. Together with the film's cast, the
writer and director J.C. Chandor masterfully shows how each
and every person up the chain of banking seniority would have
to weigh difficult decisions and wrestle with the moral and
financial consequences of their actions.
And herein lies the key to Margin Call's truth: It examines the
thoughts and motivations of individuals, resisting the easy
narrative shortcut of lumping everyone responsible for the
disaster into some monolithic, single-minded group. By doing
so, Margin Call manages to do what almost no book, blog,
newscast or Senate hearing has adequately done for the
American people: to explain not just how the financial crisis
happened (which financial giants failed in what order, which
government entities bailed them out, etc.), but rather, to explain
why it happened.
The standard trope about the crisis until now has generally been
to point the finger at greedy banks and corrupt corporations.
This isn't an unreasonable reaction; when something as
disastrous as the Great Recession happens, it is natural to want
a bad guy to blame and punish. Hollywood, for its part, has
always been inclined to this kind of Manichaeism—after all,
every good story needs a hero and a villain. And the nefarious
banker makes for a pretty perfect villain. Michael Douglas's
iconic portrayal of Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street
set the mold for this character, and a batch of post-financial
crisis films have followed suit: from narratives like Wall Street
2 and Company Men, to documentaries like Inside Job and
Capitalism: A Love Story.
The problem with this portrayal is that it simply does not reflect
reality. There were no capitalist masterminds who were able to
maliciously game the entire financial system, no conspiratorial
"fat cats" who single-handedly brought about the crisis. That's
why there have been no major prosecutions of any of the
leading figures of American finance: because they didn't
actually break any laws. (Investigations across Wall Street since
2008 have turned up a few cases of isolated fraud and some

infractions of SEC regulations, but nothing that could possibly
be seen as a major cause of the crisis). And this is the core
dilemma that is so vexing to the American people. How can
something so bad, that hurt so many people and caused so much
damage, have come about without any overt wrongdoing?
Margin Call attempts to give an honest answer to that question.
There is no character in the film who breaks the law, engages in
conspiracy, or does anything a reasonable person would label as
unquestionably immoral. Even when the CEO of the film's
fictional bank makes the decision to sell all the company's toxic
assets—the act that literally sets in motion the complete
collapse of the entire American financial system—it is an
understandable, if difficult, choice. What else can he do? If he
doesn't sell first and start the catastrophe, someone else will.
The outcome is inevitable, so what good could it possibly do for
him to sacrifice himself and his firm and all his employees' jobs
if it makes no difference to the outcome?
That is the core conundrum of what economists call a collective
action problem. If no individual person or firm's actions can
make a difference, the only reasonable thing to do is assume
everyone else will follow their most selfish (and possibly
destructive) instincts. Everyone has an incentive to follow the
worst path they suspect others of following, and so it becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy. This explains not only why bubbles
burst, but also why they build up in the first place. After all,
why did the big investment banks start packaging and selling
huge amounts of the mortgage-backed securities that eventually
triggered the crisis? Because all the other banks were doing it.
They were seeking higher profits, of course, but profits are the
raison d'être of any company and the basis of its survival. Each
bank's employees knew that if they didn't get in on this
extremely lucrative new branch of the business, they'd fall
behind their competitors, their share price would go down,
they'd get fired.
Even if they thought the securities might crash at some
unknowable point in the future, it would happen regardless of

their own decision whether or not to get involved, and in the
meantime it was their job to get the timing right for their
shareholders and lock in profits before that bubble bursts. It
was by this exact same thinking that so many millions of
ordinary Americans bought or refinanced homes they couldn't
really afford in the expectation of making an outsized return on
their investment. Virtue this was not. But in a capitalist
economy, decisions aren't made on virtue, they're made on self-
interest. These courses of action were logical on the individual
level. The problem was that collectively they made everyone
worse off.
The difficult truth is that with systemic failures like the one that
caused our current economic crisis there is no one to blame
because everyone is to blame. The only enemy in Margin Call is
the system itself. And not just the banking system, for the "real
economy" or "Main Street," as politicians like to call it, is just
as dependent on Wall Street as Wall Street is on them. Wall
Street exists, as one of the movie's characters poignantly puts it,
because the rest of society demands that it exist; they demand
all the aspects of a modern, affluent civilization that an
advanced financial system makes possible. Through our
government and through our own actions in the marketplace, we
all set the rules, we all took advantage of the massive expansion
of cheap credit and affordable housing and ballooning asset
prices, we all benefitted from the upside of the bubble, just as
we are all suffering from its aftermath today.
In the end, however, this sympathetic portrayal of the bankers'
dilemma offers perhaps the most damning indictment one can
make of the modern capitalist financial system. After all, if
such disaster can come about even when decent people are more
or less trying to do their best, then the flaws of the system must
run very deep indeed. It means that the problem can't be fixed
by just rounding up a few bad apples and throwing them in jail.
The kind of collective action problem that brought about the
financial crisis is exactly the kind of market failure where some
kind of outside intervention is most appropriate and

necessary鈥攚here it should be in the interest not only of the
general public, but also of the banks themselves, for the
government to step in and establish rules to prevent anyone
from starting off a competitive cycle of ever-riskier behavior.
And indeed, the bankers seemed to agree on this: After the
crisis, all the major investment banks issued multiple statements
supporting a move by the federal government to impose
regulatory reform.
The problem arises, of course, when theory gets translated to
practice. The Dodd-Frank financial reform law was passed only
over the objections of major banks, who are now advocating
that large parts of it be repealed. Perhaps the banks' statements
in support of reform were just a cynical ploy to begin with, but
that wouldn't explain why essentially all major American banks
complied with new international capitalization standards
outlined by the Basel III accords (and actually met their
requirements years ahead of the deadline) even though they
reduced profit margins. The fact is bankers are astute to the
flaws of Dodd-Frank. Many economists question whether some
of its more controversial regulations will actually reduce
systemic risk, or rather just create needless red tape and
encourage risk to shift to other even more dangerously
unregulated sectors of finance like hedge funds. Also, its
stringent measures will not apply to foreign banks, thus putting
U.S. firms at a disadvantage without removing the risk of a
global meltdown. By contrast, economists were in near
unanimous agreement that Basel III would reduce international
systemic risk.
Generally speaking, the best kind of reforms are those that
avoid trying to predetermine exactly what kinds of financial
transactions or activities should or should not be allowed, but
instead seek to better align individual incentives with the
collective interest—essentially to reward bankers for regulating
themselves. Requiring individual pay to be more strongly linked
to long-term investment returns and firm performance would be
one step in the right direction, but even that strategy poses

problems. Every new set of rules has limits and creates an
incentive to skirt them or offload risk to overlooked areas.
And this is the ultimate鈥攁nd ultimately unsatisfying—
conclusion of Margin Call: that there may be no true and final
fix for the problem; that, to a large extent, it may be simply
unavoidable that bubbles will build and burst, and that financial
crises will continue to happen in any economy that resembles
free market capitalism, for the instincts and behaviors that
cause them are so basic to human nature. In the film's ending
scene, the bank's CEO stares out over the Manhattan skyline and
recounts for his junior analyst a near-epic list of the world's
financial booms and busts—dating back some 400 years. The
message is clear: This has happened before, it will happen
again. Human nature does not change. The real question to take
away from the movie is not whether we should reform our
financial and economic system to prevent another crisis. The
question is whether we can at all.
Works Cited
Krauthammer, Daniel. "How Margin Call' Gets It Right About
the Financial Crisis." New Republic, Hamilton Fish, 22 Oct.
2011, newrepublic.com/article/96569/margin-call-2008-
financial-crisis-banking-reform.
Management 306
Wake-up Call: Morals and Market on the Brink of a Financial
Disaster
Olivia Nicole, Socializing Finance
Although the National Bureau of Economic Research locates the
beginning of the Great Recession in December 2007, the
economic system truly exploded with the fall of Lehman
Brothers in September 2008. As hundreds of billions in
mortgage-related investments went sour, one of the mighty
investment banks that once ruled high finance went bankrupt—
the largest bankruptcy in history. But there must have been a
moment when investment banks realized that their firms didn't

have enough capital to withstand a dramatic decline in the value
of their securities. What happened then? Chandor's movie
Margin Call explores this moment of realization.
The movie tells the story of a night in the life of investment
bankers as they try to save their firm. Its 24-hour time frame
begins with a shot of New York's skyline and the sound of Wall
Street's opening bell and quickly moves into the shadowy
offices of a major investment bank—a confined space proper to
create a constrictive atmosphere. The day starts with a round of
layoffs, which terminates 80% of the employees of the floor—
among them Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), ruthlessly ousted from
his position as a risk analyst. Before he is escorted to the
elevator, he hands to entry-level analyst Peter a flash drive. It
contains a bombshell: information that could prove to be the
downfall of the firm. The news moves up the corporate ladder in
the dead of the night, culminating in a tense strategy meeting
including two young analysts, their superiors, and the CEO of
the firm. What shall they do? Who is to blame? Who to fire?
The story told doesn't serve any historical truth, but serves to
explore the moral dimension of high finance. It humanizes the
perpetrators—and beneficiaries—of the disaster, without going
as far as acquitting them. Hence the movie is both in line with
and a departure from previous Wall Street movies. It departs
and builds from Oliver Stone's classic Wall Street. Fox (Charlie
Sheen) broke the insider-trading laws to get access to the world
of the rich and the powerful, the world of Gordon Gekko
(Michael Douglas). The paradox is that a movie that was
envisioned as a cautionary tale, a damnation of Faust of modern
times, became a cult movie in Wall Street. "Greed is good,"
indeed. The villain became a hero. Oliver Stone tried to correct
his failure with Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. Out of
prison but still disgraced by his peers, Gordon Gekko
manipulates his future son-in-law, an idealistic stock broker, to
rebuild his empire. Greed irrevocably corrupted him.
Margin Call does not present a case of crime and corruption, but
still shows the corruptive power of money. All the characters

seem to be captive in the gilded prison of easy money and
lavish lifestyle. None of them will refuse the deal that is offered
to them: Eric Dale, the risk analyst who was unceremoniously
fired, will accept to have his silence bought; Sam Rogers (Kevin
Spacey), the head of the trading floor, as disgusted as he is, will
remain at his job because he "needs the money"; Rogers
assuages his traders' apprehension about selling toxic assets to
trusted trading partners with the promise of $2.4 million in
bonuses if they succeed; even Peter, the young analyst, will stay
and get promoted. Everyone has his price. The movie is also full
of references to the Wall Street movies: Sam Rogers' only
friend is indeed his dog, who is slowly dying of a tumor—which
also serves as an obvious metaphor for the health of the firm.
Nevertheless, in Chandor's movie, there are no villains or
heroes. Peter comes close to being a hero but ends up being
corrupted by the power of money, as do all the others. It coldly
explores the psychological pressures and ethical choices
investment bankers faced when they realized that they were on
the brink of a global disaster of their own making. The tone is
then in between the frankly apologetic Too Big to Fail and the
prosecutorial Inside Job or Capitalism: A Love Story.
The movie is constructed in reference to previous Wall Street
movies, as well as the 2008 financial crisis. It is the first
blockbuster movie on the crisis. The complexity of the
mechanisms that triggered the crisis make it a bold attempt,
which in this case is pretty successful—courtesy of the
experience of the filmmaker's father, who was a stock broker at
Merrill Lynch for over 40 years. It is intended for a large
audience, yet still full of insider's references to the crisis. The
problem is stated in very vague terms, and it generally avoids
any financial jargon. I wondered though who in the audience
understood the young analyst's speech, mentioning words such
as VAR or MBS—the use of which was actually an astute way
of making the audience get a glimpse of the closure and
complexity of this world. Although no explicit reference to
Lehman is made, the firm is highly recognizable. The CEO of

the company is named John Tuld 鈥� a direct reference to Dick
Fuld. Demi Moore's character, Sarah Robertson, is an obvious
reference to Erin Callan, the former CFO of Lehman, with her
high heels and pony tail. Her fate is also the same as Callan's:
she will be the official scapegoat, having been fired first.
Another insider's reference to the crisis is John Tuld speaking
about the "music stopping". It is a direct reference to Chuck
Prince's famous statement: "When the music stops, in terms of
liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is
playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing."
More generally though, Margin Call's ambition is not to depict
the 2008 crisis, described in vague terms, but to dissect the
world of high finance.
The movie accurately describes the evolution, functioning and
lifestyle of high finance. It correctly describes the increasing
sophistication of high finance, perceptible in the sophistication
of the products and structure of the hierarchy. In the movie,
only a young and bright "rocket scientist" with a PhD in
engineering from the MIT, is able to truly understand the risk
attached to the complex structured-products. "Speak to me like
a small child or a golden retriever," implores the CEO of the
company, John Tuld, in a late night meeting. His background is
in sales, as well as the head of the trading division, and he
might not be able to grasp the intricacies of the models
deployed to value the mortgage-backed securities. The contrast
in their backgrounds speaks to the evolution of the financial
world. It also shows the larger consequences of this evolution
for the economy: finance now attracts the best engineering
talents with its high compensation schemes and lavish lifestyle.
"A rocket scientist, why are you in trading?" Asks John Tuld.
For the money, of course. Hence the moral dilemma of the risk
manager who just got laid off: an engineer by training, he could
be building bridges over the Ohio river and help the real
economy, as he did when he was young.
Margin Call also accurately describes the functioning of an
investment bank, and gives a sense of the reasons that might

have led to a disaster. It shows how status hierarchies, internal
conflicts, and structural secrecy might have played a role in the
catastrophe. The warning signs provided by the risk analyst—
who was part of the first round of layoffs, leaving the company
without a risk manager for that trading division—were not taken
into account. Risk analysts didn't have as much status and
influence as other functions. However the warning signs that he
provided decision makers with were weak and incomplete—it
took the combination of his knowledge and a trader's knowledge
to get a full pictures of the risks the company faced. Finally, the
movie accurately describes the lifestyle of high finance. The
young character, whose presence might at first seem puzzling, is
here to ask all the na茂ve questions of the outsider: How much
do you earn? But how could you spend all that money? He still
marvels at a lifestyle that others now take for granted.
Margin Call is thus a dissection of the high finance world, not a
moral tale 鈥� although it also dissects the worldviews of high
bankers. There is a brief moment when the youngest character
gazes out the window at people who are totally unaware of the
gloom and doom that is about to plague their lives. Nevertheless
there are very few moments when the bankers actually consider
the damage that is going to affect the whole economy. Their
main responsibility is to maintain the company alive and to
maximize shareholder's wealth. Some characters display a sense
of responsibility to other actors in Wall Street, but no sense of
the collective interest of the business community or of society
as a whole is displayed. Their only concern is whether selling
off all the toxic assets first and hurting their trading partners to
save their balance sheet is right—"right for who?" asks Sam
Rogers. Tuld does not care for such considerations, for in his
amoral calculation, "there are three ways to make a living in
this business: be first, be smarter or cheat." They will be first
and smarter, and dump as many toxic assets on the market—
which will inevitably trigger a meltdown. The wealth of a few
takes precedence over the welfare of many. But the high
bankers perceive that they share responsibility for the damage

with society as a whole—as Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) states,
their contribution to society is to enable ordinary people to
spend the money that they don't have.
David Denby of The New Yorker declared that Margin Call was
one of the strongest American films of the year and easily the
best Wall Street movie ever made. Opinions will diverge on the
aesthetic merits of the movie, but it is absolute must-see for any
of us working in sociology of finance.
Works Cited
Nicole, Olivia. "Wake-up Call: Morals and Market on the Brink
of a Financial Disaster." Socializing Finance, 16 Nov.
2011, socfinance.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/wake-up-call-
morals-and-market-on-the-brink-of-a-financial-disaster/
Management 306
Margin Call: A Financial-Crisis Film That's on the Money
Christopher Orr, The Atlantic
"There's a difference between an old-fashioned financial panic
and what happened on Wall Street in 2008," wrote Michael
Lewis in his excellent chronicle of the crash, The Big Short. "In
an old-fashioned panic, perception creates its own reality:
Someone shouts 'Fire!' in a crowded theater and the audience
crushes each other to death in its race for the exits. On Wall
Street in 2008 the reality finally overwhelmed perceptions: A
crowded theater burned down with a lot of people still in their
seats鈥�. The problem wasn't that Lehman Brothers had been
allowed to fail. The problem was that Lehman Brothers had
been allowed to succeed."
Though the 2008 financial crisis engendered quite a few good
books and documentaries, it hasn't inspired much in the way of
narrative film. This is no great surprise: The cinematic
opportunities inherent in credit default swaps rather pale in
comparison to those of predator drones, let alone extraterrestrial
cops or robots. With his Wall Street sequel last year, Oliver
Stone tried to again seize the economic zeitgeist, but it eluded

his grasp. The film was at once hoary and contrived, an inflated
melodrama of schemes and betrayals and motorcycle races that
never conveyed the impersonal urgency of its subtitle: Money
Never Sleeps.
Among the many virtues of Margin Call, the engrossing debut
feature by writer-director J.C. Chandor, is its appreciation of
this economic implacability. Unlike the second Wall Street (or,
for that matter, the first), the movie understands that financial
markets aren't merely tools to be wielded for purposes nefarious
or benign, but vast and evolving entities in their own right,
often inscrutable even to their purported custodians. Chandor's
film is not a tale of the plots and counterplots of conniving
bankers. It is a disaster movie, in which even the Masters of the
Universe are running for their lives.
The movie depicts two days鈥攁nd the long, intervening
night鈥攁t a large investment firm loosely based on Lehman
Brothers. The financial bubble is already popping, but no one
has yet heard the sound it makes, with the exception of veteran
risk analyst Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci). Before he can warn his
colleagues, however, Dale is offhandedly cashiered, in what is
clearly not the firm's first round of layoffs. (As he tells the duo
of Ryan-Bingham-like downsizers assigned to "ease his
transition": "Look, I run risk management. I don't see how that's
a natural place to start cutting jobs.") On his way out of the
building, Dale tosses a USB drive containing his unfinished
research to a young prot茅g茅, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto),
who has escaped the corporate axe.
That night, as his fellow survivors head out to toast their good
fortune, Sullivan stays behind to complete the analysis Dale had
begun. It is, as he soon recognizes, a harbinger of financial
apocalypse. Sullivan summons his boss (Paul Bettany), who
summons his boss (Kevin Spacey), who summons his boss
(Simon Baker), each fish bigger than the last, all the way up to
the biggest fish in the pond: a primeval creature named Tuld,
who arrives by helicopter and is played by Jeremy Irons.
As we work our way up this food chain, one character after

another seems set up as narrative foil or villain-in-waiting:
Bettany's tough, crew-cutted Brit, grinding Nicorette lozenges
between his teeth as if they were competitors; Spacey's mid-
level exec, pining for a sick dog while inured to the human toll
around him; Irons's sardonic, sepulchral CEO. Yet with a minor
exception or two, there are no white hats or black hats to be
found here, merely modern-day shades of gray flannel.
Chandor's film is less a portrait of individual malfeasance than
of systemic, cultural failure. His characters have made their
moral compromises gradually, selling off bits of themselves at a
loss, piece by piece, until they find that their debts outweigh
their assets and the only evident way out is to keep going.
The movie unfolds as a series of confrontations and
collaborations between these characters, and though their
outcomes are never much in doubt they are charged with
urgency and intelligence. There are discussions of blame (which
runs, as ever, downhill); bouts of lofty rationalization; and
weighings of self-preservation against the public interest. (One
need not be a student of the crisis to know how these turn out.)
When Spacey warns of creating a panic in the markets, Irons
responds drily, "If you're the first one out the door, that's not
called panicking."
Margin Call is perforated with sharp insights. Each ascending
echelon of the bank's hierarchy has a weaker understanding of
the complex financial instruments they are trading than the one
beneath it. ("Just speak to me in English," Spacey tells his
analysts at one point; "Speak as you might to a young child, or a
golden retriever," requests Irons at another.) And though this is
a story of people wedded to their jobs, the lone female
executive (Demi Moore) is the only one for whom that marriage
appears to be exclusive, and the consolations of family an
unaffordable luxury.
The cast is uniformly and uncommonly good, even by their
generally lofty standards. Spacey in particular offers his best
performance in years, emerging bit by bit as the closest thing
the movie has to a conscience, however muddied. And Moore

has a brittle, sexless authenticity as the Only Woman in the
Room. This may be her first film set in an office in which no
one throws anyone else lustfully across a desk.
Chandor's direction is understated but self-assured, and his
script鈥攚hich has more than a hint of Mamet to it鈥攕uperb.
Indeed, this is the all-too-rare film that began with a screenplay
and then filled in the "talent," rather than the other way around.
(It is also the fledgling venture of Quinto's production company,
Before the Door.)
With luck, the Occupy Wall Street movement will offer Margin
Call newfound salience, and a broader audience than it might
otherwise have reached. But whether or not this is the case,
Chandor's film is among the best of the year to date, a fable of
global financial calamity distilled down to an intimate
microcosm of human greed and frailty.
Works Cited
Orr, Christopher. "'Margin Call': A Financial-Crisis Film That's
on the Money." The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 Oct.
2011, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/10/marg
in-call-a-financial-crisis-film-thats-on-the-money/247116/.
Management 306
Margin Call
Assignment
Write a paper responding to one of the following prompts:
Paper 1

For the final paper, discuss the actions of the main characters in
the film. What were their motivations? Their options? How did
their "world view" influence their decision-making? Do you
agree with their choices or not, and why? Analyze their
predicament and discuss the merits of their actions.
Paper 2
For this paper, discuss how the decisions made by the main
characters influence the "real world." What did their actions do
to the other Wall Street firms? How did they influence domestic
and global financial markets? What effect did they have on the
valuations of other securities? How did they influence lending,
mortgages, and retirement accounts? And finally, what effect
did they have on capital allocation and formation?
Group
You can write the paper in a group. There is no limit to the size
of the group, and you can work with students from other
sections of 306. When you post your paper to Blackboard, list
everyone in the group on the top of the first page. Also, each
member of the group must post a copy of the (same) paper to
Blackboard.
Characters
Sam Rogers, Investment Floor Head (Kevin Spacey)

Will Emerson, Head of Trading (Paul Bettany)
John Tuld, CEO and Chairman of the Board (Jeremy Irons)
Peter Sullivan, Senior Risk Analyst (Zachary Quinto)
Seth Bregman, Junior Risk Analyst (Penn Badgley)
Jared Cohen, Investment Division Head (Simon Baker)
Eric Dale, Former Head of Risk Management (Stanley Tucci)
Sarah Robertson, Chief Risk Management Officer (Demi Moore)
Ramesh Shah, Legal Counsel (Aasif Mandvi)
Reviews
"...relentless in its honesty and shrewd in its insights and
techniques... an extraordinary feat of filmmaking"
—A. O. Scott, New York Times
"Margin Call is one of the strongest American films of the year
and easily the best Wall Street movie ever made."
—David Denby, New Yorker
"... this confident, crisply made piece of work does an expert
job of bringing us inside the inner sanctum of a top Wall Street
investment bank..."

—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
Margin Call "takes place over a 36-hour period at a large Wall
Street investment bank and highlights the initial stages of the
financial crisis of 2007-2008... Although the film does not
depict any real Wall Street firm, or similar corporate action
during the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman Sachs similarly
moved early to hedge and reduce its position in mortgage-
backed securities, at the urging of two employees. Other firms
like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns found themselves
similarly and catastrophically over-leveraged in mortgage-
backed securities. They scrambled, ultimately unsuccessfully, to
manage the financial and public panic that ensued when their
problems became apparent and the global financial markets
plunged as a result." (Margin Call (film))
MLA Formatting
Your paper must follow MLA format. The simplest solution is
to use the Margin Call (Template).
Source: Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
General Guidelines

Use standard, white 8.5 x 11-inch paper.
Double-space and use a legible font (e.g. Times New Roman).
The font size should be 12 pt.
Set the margins to 1 inch on all sides.
Indent the first line of paragraphs one half-inch from the left
margin.
Formatting the First Page
In the upper left-hand corner of the first page, list your name,
your instructor's name, the course, and the date. Be sure to
double-space.
Double space again and center the title. Do not underline,
italicize, or place your title in quotation marks; write the title in
Title Case (standard capitalization)—not in all capital letters.
Double space between the title and the first line of the text.
Create a header in the upper right-hand corner that includes
your last name, followed by a space with a page number;
number all pages consecutively with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3,
4, etc.), one-half inch from the top and flush with the right
margin.
Last Name 1
Student Name
Professor Watnik
Management 306
Date

Margin Call
This template contains basic MLA formatting:
indentations, margins, font, and line spacing. A five-page paper
totals approximately 1,500 words (not including the header and
Works Cited).
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Works Cited
Chandor, J.C., director. Margin Call. Lionsgate, 2011.
Management 306
Margin Call (Example)
Michael Rocha, Dybra Grande, Jeremy Greenland
Professor Watnik

Management 306
March 19, 2013
Margin Call
Margin Call depicts a dramatization of a financial firm's crisis
as events start to unfold during a thirty-six hour window. The
film was brilliantly written in a way to not disagree nor agree
with the financial firms or employees' actions, but to leave it up
to the viewers as to what their opinion was. The movie begins
when Peter, a Senior Risk Analyst, discovers that his company
is going to go underwater when his former boss, Eric, hands him
a flash drive and tells him to be careful. After working for
several hours and figuring out that the formula they base trades
off of is bad, Peter tries to get ahold of Eric with no luck. He
then calls his friend, Seth, who is having drinks with Will, who
is Head of Trading, and urgently states they should return to the
office. After showing Will, word travels quickly to the Chief
Executive Officer, Tuld, who calls a board meeting at 3 A.M.
After hours of discussion, it is decided that the company will
sell off all the mortgages at a discount, eventually to little
value, to survive and sink their competitors. Although some
characters are conflicted about what to do, in the end they
decide to help the company and make the sales. Once the sale is
completed, the company tries to save their reputation by stating
they were not warned or given enough information to prevent
this type of event from happening, which leads to the dismissal
of Sarah Robertson.
Peter Sullivan is a physicist who switched careers to earn a
lucrative salary as a Senior Risk Analyst. Peter, who figures out
what Eric was trying to finish before he was fired, discovered
the company will crash and bum unless they took quick action
with the fire sale. Peter's motivation and world view is not as
straight forward as some of the other characters' are, but are
easily contrasted against his friend's, Seth. Although they have
both seemingly worked for the company for the same amount of

time, Peter is both smarter and older. As Seth is worried about
what he will do if he is fired, Peter is more concerned about the
bigger picture: if the fire sale is executed and what its
implications are for society. For example, Peter was motivated
to look through the flash drive handed to him, and warned his
bosses about what was going to happen, not to save himself, but
to help the company. This falls in line with his worldview of a
general concern for his peers and country. Although Peter's
options are not explicitly clear, he does have a few to which he
can take. His choices included either, taking the information he
learned to his bosses and warning them of the coming
catastrophe or taking the information to the media or a rival
firm for an exchange of a massive sum of money.
Seth is the youngest employee of the group and is included into
the situation when Peter calls him to help look for his boss. He
is a Junior Risk Analyst, who is more concerned with the
amount of money he makes and whether or not he is getting
fired. This is evident several times throughout the movie. For
example, he asks his friend, Peter, how much he thinks his
bosses make each year. Additionally, he asks several times
whether they think he will be fired once the fire sale ends the
following day. Although Seth does not make any critical
decisions, his world view is evident with his actions throughout
the movie. For example, his selfishness is noted when he tells
Peter to come down from the office and have a few celebratory
drinks, instead of working to find out why Eric told Peter to "be
careful." Additionally, I believe Seth would have chosen to do
what was more beneficial to help his own bank account, rather
than having a concern for his company or society.
Jared Cohen, the Investment Division Head, is the individual
who comes up with the idea of "selling it all." Simon's world
view is evident when he implants the idea of selling their
product to save their own skin. Furthermore, it is shown during
the scene when he is shaving and Seth comes out of the

bathroom stall crying, Seth states "this is all I wanted to do;"
and Jared replies back with an uninterested look and response of
"really." Additionally, during the scene with Jared and Sarah in
the elevator, Sarah is trying to create a strategy with Jared to
deal with Tuld. However, Jared replies "I'm not sure we need
one, that's not the way I do things." His response states that he
does not care if Sarah is thrown under the bus in regards to who
gets to keep their job. Furthermore, Jared knew that there might
have been a problem for about a year yet failed to act on it. This
shows that he does not care what happens to his work industry
or reputation, only that he wants more money in his pocket and
job security. Jared's options could have impacted society if he
decided not to sell. He could have come up with a different idea
which would have not created the start of an economic
recession. For example, Jared could have gone with what Sam
had mentioned: the ethical route. Additionally, Jared could have
prevented this entire catastrophe if he had actually listened to
Sarah and caught the problem the year prior when he was first
told, rather than letting it grow into what it did in the movie.
Sam Rogers, the Investment Floor Head played by Kevin
Spacey, is my favorite character for a very specific reason.
You're first introduced to him after he's been informed that the
firings for the day are finally over with. He goes out to give
them an inspirational speech, calling them "survivors". In my
opinion, he comes off as somewhat callous; almost as if he's
insensitive to the situation. You're left wondering if he truly
cares for his employees, but over the course of the movie you
see that he does; even when he's shown to be numb towards
certain situations. The reason for him being my favorite
character is the juxtaposition between his work persona and his
personal life. Throughout the movie we're given glimpses of his
personal life. You find out his dog is dying and that he's going
through a divorce. It personalizes him; makes him more than a
faceless corporate stooge. Eventually you realize that he is in
fact the conscious of the movie. He points out the unethical

decisions being made and tries to offer a moral viewpoint on the
situation by asking Mr. Tuld, "Yes, but at what cost?" in
regards to selling off the mortgage backed securities. Towards
the end of the movie, I see him as a reflection of the average
good person. He wants to be above that kind of job and doesn't
want to be influenced to make unethical decisions; but the
realities of his life, paying bills, paying alimony, etc, bring him
back to reality. As he tells Mr. Tuld, near the end of the movie,
"believe it or not, I need the money", Sam wants out but the
stresses of real life pull him back in.
My analysis of Sam segues nicely into Will Emerson, Head of
Trading and played by Paul Bettany. Will is, in a lot of ways,
Sam's disciple, with maybe a smidge more indifference towards
the average worker. I believe Will has very nicely rationalized
what people might consider the unethical work he does; this is
illustrated in his speech to Seth as they are coming back from
Eric Dale's house. "Jesus, Seth. Listen, if you really wanna do
this with your life you have to believe you're necessary and you
are. People wanna live like this in their cars and big fuckin'
houses they can't even pay for, then you're necessary. The only
reason that they all get to continue living like kings is cause we
got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off
and then the whole world gets really fuckin' fair really fuckin'
quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but
they don't. They want what we have to give them but they also
wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have no idea
where it came from. Well, that's more hypocrisy than I'm
willing to swallow, so fuck em." The quote is a little lengthy,
but I think it's integral to understanding who Will Emerson is as
a person. He's not completely insensitive towards people's
plights. He seems to be genuinely sorry about Seth losing his
job, but he's also pragmatic, informing Seth that "nothing I'm
gonna say is going to make you feel any better. It's just going to
suck for a while and then you'll be fine." He truly believes that
what he's doing is necessary and, as such, he's not going to quip

over the dirty parts of the job. However, on that same note, he
also very much looks up to Sam and is willing to follow Sam's
lead even to his own detriment. When Mr. Cohen asks Will if
he'd be willing to take over for Sam, Will makes it very clear
that his viewpoint of what's right and wrong has and will always
follow Sam's. In the end, I felt a lot more respect for Will than
in the beginning. Pragmatic he might be, but he definitely has
his own sense of ethics and morality and he's not willing to
compromise them.
Jeremy Irons plays John Tuld, CEO and chairman of the board. I
think the director wrote the part of John Tuld to reflect the face
of Wall Street as people see it. A wealthy CEO who's ruthless
and willing to do whatever it takes in order to ensure his
company comes out on top. However he also displays a sense of
honor and at least does some rationalizing of his actions. During
the board meeting he tells Mr. Cohen "there are three ways to
make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat.
And I don't cheat." I think the last part is very significant; he
makes it clear that he will not break any rules in order to come
ahead, he might bend them but his own code of honor will not
let him actually break them. That might seem like a fine
distinction but I believe it to be an important one. Near the end,
when he's explaining to Sam about how the percentages never
change between the winners and losers, I think that was an
attempt to explain how people like John Tuld see the world and
their role in it. Sam kind of shrugs it off afterwards though, by
saying that he's not staying because of the speech but because
he needs the money. The speech, however, struck me as a little
contrived. I mean here Mr. Tuld is, hours after ruining the
market as they knew it at the time, thousands of people losing
their jobs around the world, and he's having a steak dinner. It
felt like the logic was relatively sound but behind his choices
he, himself, had lost touch with the reality of it all. This was
contrasted by Peter who was still down to earth enough to
realize how impactful the company's decisions would be that

day.
Eric Dale has been the head of the risk management department
for 19 years until he was let go one morning, forced to collect
his belongings and leave the firm immediately. He is told that
all of his cell phone services have been cut off and he will be
escorted out of the building. As he leaves the company, he
encounters Peter Sullivan and gives him a USB drive asking him
to examine his project and departs with these words "be
careful". Unfortunately, for the firm these words proved
ominous, since the project warned of an upcoming possibility.
Eric's project analyzes levels of volatility of mortgage-backed
securities as they began to lose value. This provided
information on expecting incurring losses that exceeded market
capitalization within a period of time for the firm. Throughout
the movie, employees of the firm are trying to get in contact
with Eric about his project. When they find him, he is offered a
hefty sum to provide consultation to the firm on decisions
derived by his research. I thought Eric reacted considerately
after being fired and escorted by security out of the building. I
personally would have not said anything about my research due
to the fact I was treated like a criminal. The fact that he looked
beyond the behavior of his superiors and genuinely cared for the
people working at the firm was honorable of him and speaks
volumes.
Sarah Robertson is the Chief Risk Management Officer for her
firm, but becomes a sacrificial lamb overnight. Although she
has filtered several warnings to John Tuld and Jared Cohen over
the risk of the mortgage-backed securities, her analyses are
disregarded. Unfortunately for her, neither John nor Jared
wanted to share the blame of the losses incurred by the firm.
Sarah was forced to take the blame and become a sacrifice to
the board in return for the losses of the mortgage-backed
securities. She was offered a hefty compensation plan by John
Tuld and was forced to remain in the company until the market

closed. I thought Sarah Robertson was an interesting character
for her courage and ability to handle responsibility. Sarah could
have refused the role of the martyr and left the company for a
better one, but she stayed.
In conclusion, this film portrayed a cutthroat industry in which
individuals were faced with important decisions such as,
creating financial stability for the company or lookout for their
shareholders, or themselves. For characters such as Sam Rogers,
Will Emerson, John Tuld, and Simon Baker, high level
executives, saving themselves from the impending doom was
more important than a financial recovery. For Eric Dale, Seth
Bregman, and Peter Sullivan analyzing, predicting, and
providing awareness of the situation was more important.
Essentially what it comes down to is empathy; Margin Call is a
realistic take on what happens inside of high level Wall Street
companies when decisions on financial crises occur. You're
shown the good, the bad, and, sometimes, the ugly.
Works Cited
Margin Call. Dir. J. C. Chandor. Perf. Kevin Spacey. Roadside
Attractions, 2011. DVD.

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