In the film "The Informant", Mark Whitacre transforms from a seemingly innocent and confused whistle blower to someone who calculated his steps and seemed sociopathic. He started off by expressing his passion in the corn business and trying to find out who was leaking information to the competitors to guiding the FBI in an investigation against his company ADM, then to being the subject of the trial.

Mark Whitacre had mainly virtue ethics. He also did what he thought would suit him best in every situation that came up. He told the FBI about the price-fixing to try and save himself. He took money from the company illegally while working for the FBI. The more the movie went down you could see how all of his actions no matter what they were he would justify as long as they benefited him. I believe that his wife Ginger Whitacre also followed virtue ethics; she seemed to stick by her husband and push for certain things mainly based on how they affected her. She did not seem to be guided on what was right or wrong, just what was the best option for her at the time. Agent Shepard followed deontological ethics. He seemed to have a genuine concern for what was right and wrong, and to try and do everything the right way. He also tried to help mark the best he could when he thought he was innocent. ADM officials followed teleological ethics; their main focus was getting what they wanted no matter what it took. They were involved in price-fixing and many other illegal or morally questionable situations to try and get what they wanted.

One of the things I found to be an interesting ethical issue was that Mark decided to lie about his childhood and backstory to get sympathy and empathy points with people. This affects stakeholder perspectives because I believe it is very telling of his character. He is willing to lie even for things that are in no way necessary at all. This may have affected ADM's decision to hire him, FBI official decision to work with him, and ADM shareholder's decisions to invest in a company with leading officials that have questionable morals. Another dilemma was price-fixing. Many shareholders probably would not invest in a company that was involved with illegal activity, especially one that carries such a weight. Mark also faced internal dilemmas such as how much he should tell the FBI, and how loyal he would be to ADM or the FBI. He struggled with this throughout, seemingly unable to choose and eventually just playing both sides.

Many things could have and should have been done differently. For one thing, Mark Whitacre could have either said nothing about the price-fixing or have been fully honest. In addition, he should have not been taking all that money illegally. He also should not have told anyone about the FBI raid that was coming and his entire story about working for them. ADM officials should not participate in price-fixing or the payouts. The FBI should have more closely examined Mark's background. They would have seen that he had a history of lying and perhaps found the money he had been taking as well.

I believe that the movie started off presenting Mark in a very light-hearted manner. They used a lot of yellow light and yellow airy tones throughout the beginning of the film. This made it seem like a more gentle matter and helped give him the appearance of a man just trying his best caught up in a bad situation who was trying to make it better. I also feel like they used yellow to play on the idea that the corn was everything to him. In addition, I felt that the voice-overs gave a comedic tone to the film. They gave comedic explanations that seemed a little tangential but were slit relatively blunt. The voiceovers were also ironic though because they seemed to distract the audience from what was happening in actuality. They guided the audience to believe something else where the actions he was taking didn't seem to match up. I felt that they made it so you could not definitely tell if he was just involved in many unfortunate accidents or if they were calculated. It was not till later in the film that you could see that they were more calculated actions that he justified. Another thing that was ironic is that the movie started off with him trying to find out who the mole is in ADM who was leaking information to the competitor company. Then he went on to become an informant for the FBI about this same company. He seems to have no issue justifying this when he is the one doing the informing and it benefits him.