After South African-born Greg Smith sent a scornful resignation op-ed to the New York Times last week, Goldman Sachs will now undertake a company-wide email review. They’ll be searching for terms like “muppet”, and other things that may help to reveal disgruntled employees.

Chief Executive, Lloyd Blankfein, told partners in a conference call this week that they were taking Greg’s alleged honesty extremely seriously.

Greg’s op-ed was highly unusual because Goldman employees follow a code similar to the first two rules of Fight Club – you do not speak about Goldman Sachs.

There may also have been a nondisclosure clause in Greg’s contract, but he didn’t care.

Typically, when Goldman employees are disgruntled, they’re encouraged to report their concerns to a supervisor, or report them anonymously to human resources.

An internal Goldman memo distributed last week said that Greg’s assertions did not represent the values or culture they try to instil at Goldman.

Greg said Goldman’s culture had changed from one that “revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility and always doing right by our clients,” to one where mistreating clients for profit had become standard practice.

This he said led to a “toxic and destructive” environment. He went on to blame Blankfein and Goldman President, Gary Cohn, for nurturing the supposed changes he described.

Greg’s courage also helped a JPMorgan Chase employee “come out”.

It’s not clear how Goldman will react if their searches turn up something they don’t like.

[Source: Reuters]