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Plausible deniability: Difference between revisions
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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 a fatuous, 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. ''Anywhere''. | }}How much of a firm’s risk management capability and infrastructure is dedicated, as a first priority, to ''plausible deniability''? This might sound a fatuous, 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. ''Anywhere''. | ||
Not, at least, in the management layer. | Not, at least, in the [[Middle management|management]] layer. | ||
Oh, stooges and patsies abound amongst the [[subject matter expert]]s who are, as {{author|Sidney Dekker}} comprehensively catalogues,<ref>{{fieldguide}}</ref> routinely found at fault and eviscerated for corporate shortcomings whose root cause was plainly poor [[Design principles|design]] in [[System|systems]] and controls. Proactively mendacious employees — while, of course, not unheard of — are the exception and not the rule: most folks who show up are earnest, want to do a solid day’s graft, be recognised for it, and go home. Those with an instinct for survival learn the [[Buttocratic oath]], and will act as a first priority in preservation of their own posterior, but as they rise through the ranks, the stakes get higher, the number of diffusion avenues inevitably grows, the priority of ensuring, above all else, plausible deniability. | |||
Now defenestration of executives certainly happens, but you sense it is rarely a product of a forensic investigation of the path of an ill-fated buck to find where it stops —bucks, in a modern corporation, do not stop anywhere: they just ''diffuse'' into thin air, mercurial wills-o’-the-wisp, eluding all attempts to snatch at them — but rather it happens through a far more visceral, less analytical. One day you’re Joe Pesci in ''Goodfellas'' — on top of the world; about to become a ''made man'': the next, there is a quiet room, plastic sheeting on the floor and a double-tap to the base of the skull. | Now defenestration of executives certainly happens, but you sense it is rarely a product of a forensic investigation of the path of an ill-fated buck to find where it stops —bucks, in a modern corporation, do not stop anywhere: they just ''diffuse'' into thin air, mercurial wills-o’-the-wisp, eluding all attempts to snatch at them — but rather it happens through a far more visceral, less analytical. One day you’re Joe Pesci in ''Goodfellas'' — on top of the world; about to become a ''made man'': the next, there is a quiet room, plastic sheeting on the floor and a double-tap to the base of the skull. | ||