Why Companies Screw Up: It's the Culture... Obviously

Abstract

As more and more companies have made big compliance mistakes and have been caught by governmental authorities, pundits have been attributing these miscues to company culture. These incidents include the violations by the banks “too big to fail” that led to the 2008 global financial debacle, as well as the repetitive misdeeds of the auto manufacturers that have led to injuries, deaths and environmental damage. In each of these cases, the bad behavior has not been characterized as an isolated legal problem. Rather, it has been diagnosed as a more pervasive cultural problem that caused the bad behavior to be rooted in a philosophy of “catch me if you can.” People knew what the rules were but simply chose to subvert them.