1. Swimming With Sharks (also known
as The Boss and Buddy Factor)

2. About Movie
• Swimming with Sharks (1994) is the story of a young,
ambitious Hollywood executive Guy (Frank Whaley) who gets
a job as a personal assistant to a Hollywood movie mogul
Buddy Ackerman (Kevin Spacey). Guy is fresh out of school
and looks forward to working with Buddy to learn the movie
business. Unfortunately, Buddy turns out to be an abusive
boss who treats his employees like slaves, abuses them
verbally, physically, and emotionally, and publicly humiliates
them. Buddy’s behavior is so abusive that it not only affects
Guy psychologically and emotionally, it also has a tremendous
impact on his relationship with Dawn (Michelle Forbes0, a
young movie producer. Finally, when Guy has had enough, he
takes matters in his own hands and decides to show Buddy
how it feels to be abused and humiliated.

4. Characters in movie
• Kevin Spacey as Buddy Ackerman
• Frank Whaley as Guy
• Michelle Forbes as Dawn Lockard
• Benicio del Toro as Rex
• T.E. Russell as Foster Kane
• Roy Dotrice as Cyrus Miles
• Matthew Flynt as Manny
• Patrick Fischler as Moe
• Jerry Levine as Jack

5. Buddy Ackerman (Kevin Spacey) as
Boss..

7. Motivation
• Need for Power

8. Personality & Values
• Machiavellianism

9. Guy ( Frank Whaley) as accused
employee

10. Motivation & Perception
• Horn effect
• Need for Achievement

11. Personality
• Self –Efficacy

12.  This movie is about abusive workplace behavior. The fact
that it is set in Hollywood, the dream destination of many
young people, makes it an interesting watch! It shows many
behaviors that abusive supervisors use against their
employees. The scene where Guy needs to go to the
bathroom but Buddy does not let him go certainly takes
abusive supervision to a whole different level. When Guy
complains about the way he is treated, Buddy is dismissive of
him. Buddy’s attitude towards Guy’s complaints is that he
just has to learn how to be tough and take it like a man, if he
wants to succeed. Just as in the movie, it is not uncommon
for abusive supervision to lead to workplace violence.
 This movie discuss about abusive supervision, deviant work
place behavior, human resource management, and
organizational behavior.

13. • Learning
• Operant conditioning
• Negative Reinforcement
• Behavioral Modeling