Polluted corporate culture must change - The Guardian

A look back at 2015 reveals some shocking corporate scandals, notably in September, when two of the world’s most powerful companies were spectacularly caught with their pants down.

On 16 September, Inside Climate News revealed that ExxonMobil, the world’s fourth largest oil company, was aware of the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels as far back as the early 1980s. Instead of acting, however, it had chosen to spearhead climate denial.

Just a few days later, car giant Volkswagen admitted to installing emissions test cheating software in up to 11m of its diesel cars. A study by scientists at West Virginia University had shown that Volkswagen’s diesel cars’ on-road NOx emissions were several times the legal limit.

While these two revelations may be unrelated, they reveal common threads that have created a business environment conducive to such repeated wrongdoings. Brought together, these threads – I would argue – can be viewed as four behavioural traits that have come to define today’s corporation:

Read The Guardian Sustainable Business story - “VW and Exxon: indicative of a polluted corporate culture that must change.”