‘What we don’t need is more masculine energy’: Where ESG fits in the corporate scandal warning system

Author and professor Guido Palazzo on the lessons learned from a deep dive into corporate scandal

What links Wells Fargo, the largest retail bank in the US with Boeing or failed blood-analysis startup Theranos? They all offer up examples of corporate scandal that feature in Guido Palazzo’s book The Dark Pattern: The hidden dynamics of corporate scandal, co-authored with Ulrich Hoffrage.

In it, Palazzo, a professor of business ethics and TEDx Talk speaker, and Hoffrage, a professor of decision theory, seek to uncover what lands huge multinational firms with multi-million-dollar fines for fraud, their senior executives at best fired or at worst jailed.

These themes might not seem immediately linked to investor relations – until those in IR find themselves dealing with the fallout as investors and other stakeholders scramble for news and try to work out the long-term damage to their returns. ‘There’s a need to understand better, from an investor perspective, why things can go so wrong,’ Palazzo stresses.