Movie: The Firm :: essays research papers

Movie The FirmSydney Pollacks film The Firm is a drama based on an desire to escapefrom the law firm (Berndini, Lambert, and Lock) from which he was hired. The relatively small but wealthy firm wines and dines the ambitious Harvard LawGraduates (played by Tom Cruise) with money and gifts in order to make him partof their team. Overwhelmed by the benignant treatment and substantial offerMitch McDeere takes the offer to be part of the Firm. The firm gets them caughtup in a affluent lifestyle that they never thought they could live. at one timeinvolved n the day to day workings of the firm McDeere began to get subtle hintsof a corruption with a Mafia mob client. McDeere gets a learn of some instruction that he shouldnt have had access to that supports his suspicions.When an FBI agent confronts him with evidence of corruption and murder withinthe firm, Mitch forms a plan to indite the partners of the firm by gatheringinformation on overbilling of the firms clients. The firms clients filescontained information that could destroy both the firm and most of their mobclients. Berndini, Lambert, and Lock had a past history of spending thumping sumsof money on their new lawyers then once they got used to the good life the firmwould let them in on the corruption that when on. The firm had a tight controlover their partners. They knew everything about their personal life as well astheir work life. All their homes were wired and their phones tapped. They alsohad access to information on their partners family and friends. With such tightcontrols over their lives they had a power to control their every move.Temptations of escape were smothered by threats of harm. In cardinal cases thethreats of harm conduct to murder.A reoccurring theme of politics and power emerged throughout the film.For this reason it seems most logical to analyze The Firm based on chaptertwelve of Stephen Robbins book organizational Behavior. Power is defined as Acapacity that A has to influence th e behavior of B so that B does things he orshe would not otherwise do. The focus of this paper is going to based on thepower that the firm had over its employees. In order to better understand theconcept of power and where it comes from two published researchers named J.R.P.French Jr. and B. Raven came up with a five-category classification. The fivecategories are as follows coercive power, reward power, legitimate power,