Published on: October 28, 2026 at 1:25 pm
While some people like to think of US President Donald Trump as a social, political, and historical aberration, in fact, his ascension to power is the culmination of the spread of Wall Street culture that has increasingly dominated corporate America since the 1980s. It has come to dominate US politics even more since the infamous 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which led to an avalanche of super political action committees (Super PACs) and dark money influencing elections and lobbying elected officials.
According to Academy of Management Scholar Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University, the Trump administration is not particularly unique but rather reflects the broader influence of mercenary, transactional, profit-driven, hyper-competitive Wall Street culture that has permeated the C-suites and boardrooms of corporate America. Many leaders across the financial services industry, multinational corporations, and politics have moved away from stewardship and instead are motivated primarily, if not exclusively, by the almighty buck.
“The idea of leaders not being good stewards of the human beings and of the organizations that they are responsible for is not something that has just come to infect politics; it has infected corporate life and other institutions as well,” Pfeffer said. “You see people abusing their power in a variety of different ways.
“Some years ago, I wrote the book Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time, when I had a friend who said to me, ‘Tell me, what is the prescription in this book for how to be a better leader?’ And my quick response was, ‘It depends upon what you mean by a better leader.’
“In the book, I advise aspiring leaders to reject feel-good myths like absolute authenticity and modesty in favor of strategic performance, shameless self-promotion, and a clear-eyed mastery of systemic power dynamics.”
As an example, Pfeffer cited Stanley O’Neal, the first African American chief executive of a major Wall Street securities firm who left Merrill Lynch when it got itself into financial trouble during the financial crisis of 2008. The firm was bought by Bank of America.
“Stan O’Neal earned $48 million a year, presided over the demise of Merrill Lynch, then left with $160 million dollars,” Pfeffer said. “If you’re Mr. and Mrs. O’Neal, you did fine.
“If you’re one of the 40,000-plus Merrill Lynch employees who got laid off, you didn’t do so fine,” he said. “Executive pay has gone from 80 times median employee compensation to 400 times, so the idea that people will act in selfish, self-interested, and capricious ways is not just confined to Donald Trump.
“He’s an extreme example, because he’s in this extraordinarily powerful position, and he has probably gone farther than most people in disregarding social norms, the expectations of the presidential office to avoid conflicts of interest, the US Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses, etc., and surrounding himself with people who are selected not for their competence, but only for their willingness to do his bidding, and you can see that with Pete Hegseth, who’s a horrible defense secretary.”
As another example, Pfeffer brought up John DeLorean’s book On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, published in 1979, in which he exposes a corporate culture defined by entrenched bureaucracy, a failure of social responsibility, and an executive leadership team detached from operational realities inside America’s largest automaker.
“At the time he worked there at General Motors, he described a phenomenon he called ‘the promotion of the unobvious choice,’ a highly effective corporate power strategy that senior executives used to guarantee absolute personal loyalty and compliance and eliminate dissent by appointing unqualified, unremarkable people to senior positions, then the appointees owe the leaders a debt of loyalty,” Pfeffer said.
“So, none of the phenomena that I see going on in the current presidential administration are unique to politics—I mean, they’re extreme in their manifestations, but the idea that nobody needs to take care of anybody else, this idea of rampant individualism, is something that is going on not just in the US and not just in politics but across governments and businesses all over the world.”
A sample of Pfeffer’s AOM research findings:
- When Time Is Money, Work Is Stressful
- Returning Favors May Be Less Likely at Work
- Employee Health Benefit Hassles Cost US Businesses Billions
- Thirteen Practices for Managing People
