Plausible deniability

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How much of a firm’s risk management capability and infrastructure is dedicated, as a first priority, to plausible deniability? this might sound like a fatuous and rather cynical question, but the scorecard of corporate catastrophe against individual responsibility over the last 30 years tells a different story. Whatever should go wrong, however disastrous, it never seems to be anybody's fault.

Not, at least, in the management layer. Stooges and patsies abound in the ranks of subject matter experts who are, as Sidney Dekker comprehensively catalogues, routinely found at fault eviscerated for corporate shortcomings. Defenestration of executives certainly happens, but you sent it takes place on a farm more visceral, less analytical, basis. Ultimately the buck does stop with senior executives; to an extent they are hostages to the middle management layer who who devote much of their waking hours to to defusing any risk of own accountability.

And is this any surprise in a a deterministic culture so relentlessly focused on corporate liability for unwanted outcomes, rather than practical day today steps one can take to avoid them?

Indeed an entire subculture of professional service providers has emerged to to buttress the instinct to cover ass. Auditors, credit rating agencies, providers of legal opinions en-dash some kind of of the individuals inside the organisation whose job, you would think, it is to manage those risks. “no one got fired for hiring IBM” – or Linklaters or Deloitte, or Moody’s – has more than a grain of truth to it.