This very interesting article is from the Wall Street Journal's Market section. The main topic of this article is about two best friends that worked at a giant hedge fund called SAC Capital Advisors. One friend, manager Noah Freeman, did not hesitate to take his soon to be best man, Donald Longueuil, down in a insider-trading case. The article mentions that during a three year insider trading investigation, Mr Freeman was caught. After getting caught, he agreed to wear a wire for the government to secretly record Mr. Longueuil. In the end, the two men, plus one more, were criminally charged. It was interesting to read that, Preet Bharara, a Manhattan U.S. Attornery said that the three men formed a "triangle of trust", while they shared inside information from multiple sources with each other.
This article is very interesting because it is an example of Leader-Member Exchange Theory. Leader-Member Exchange Theory states that relationships can be classified into two groups: In or Out. Manager Mr. Longueuil and Mr. Freeman had a "In" relationship because they were very close friends outside of work. They were such good friends that Mr. Longueuil was the best man at Mr. Freeman's wedding and Mr. Freeman had a plan to return the favor. After reading about how they had a "triangle of trust", it confirms that the quality of their exchange was in the "In" group. Mr. Freeman and Mr. Longueuil trusted each other a great deal because they knew each other. It was very interesting to find out, once the FBI came into play, the two men's "In relationship went out the window for Mr. Freeman. It is no surprise that these best friends got away with inside trading for over three years because, according to an "In" relationship in the Leader-Member Exchange Theory, "In" groups perform a lot better than "Out" groups. This article also brings up the topic of Legitimate Power. Legitimate Power is associated with havign status or formal job authority. These men used their status and formal job authority of managers to gather inside information and use it to their advantage to trade.
Click Here For The Wall Street Journal Article
-Michael Cosentino
In general, you are off to a reasonably good start on your blog. However, there are some important improvements that are needed.
ReplyDeleteOne way you can improve is to avoid what I would call “gratuitous” mentioning of words that may appear somewhere in your textbook, but that are not set in context of their theories or applied in a defined and clear way to specifics in your article that is posted. One such example in one of your posts is: “These leaders cannot fulfill the task and relationship behaviors associated with their positions if they do not abide by the ethical codes of their country.” Why bring up task and relationship behaviors? You have not discussed anything else in your post that applies these terms to specifics of the article. Neither these concepts nor the style approach from which they come are explained to relate in any way to anything else you have said, so why do you use those terms now?
You also can improve by being more precise and accurate in applying the approaches you mention. For example, one of your posts attempts to apply Situational Theory and makes the statement, “The premise of the theory is that different situations demand different types of leadership.” We have been pretty emphatic in class that Situational Theory does not address the situation at all, but rather predicts leadership styles based on follower development levels.
Another matter you may want to discuss when you meet as a team is to make sure that everyone on your team understands what a blog post involves. One of your team members did not post anything except a very, very brief comment (not an individual blog post) to your introduction. It only contained an article link and what amounted to a sentence that said, “Check out this article.” This type of post does not follow the criteria stated in the assignment file (and explained in class) at all.
Other posts do not seem to apply any specific concepts or theories from the book at all, but they merely “report” on what the article may be about. Such posts do not rise to the level of analysis, although they may be interesting. Remember what I tried to emphasize in class regarding the fact that simply mentioning a term from the textbook is not the same thing as applying it in a well-defined, analytical way to explain your insights into leadership issues.
Thus, one specific way you can improve the quality of the analysis in your posts is to apply course concepts/theories more consistently. A couple of your posts do this fairly well, while other posts do not mention any chapter-specific concepts from the book at all. It would seem to your advantage to read the Northouse chapter (15) on Leadership Ethics thoroughly (and use it), since that is the main topic of your blog.