Governance, Ethics & Company Culture

RSA Fellows and guests, including for example solicitors, accountants, bankers, academics, researchers and compliance officers are warmly invited to register for this event exploring various issues relating to company and corporate culture.

Professor Guido Palazzo will offer a presentation on his recently published book “The Dark Pattern”. Professor Palazzo and his co-author Ulrich Hoffrage investigated common patterns behind corporate scandals. In “The Dark Pattern” these two experts in business ethics and decision-making challenge the conventional view that corporate misconduct happens because of a handful of bad actors. Instead, the book shows how entire organizations can fall off the moral cliff because a few good people become ethically blind. Drawing on the latest insights from behavioral science, the authors identify nine toxic elements that lead to corporate scandals and offer nine actionable lessons for building morally resilient organisations. The Dark Pattern will strengthen the awareness, defences, and responses of tomorrow’s leaders against the subtle dynamics of moral erosion.

Our panel of speakers will discuss not only the book but the various aspects of the important topics it raises.

Speaker biographies:

Professor Guido Palazzo is Professor of Business Ethics at HEC, University of Lausanne. He studied business administration and philosophy at the University of Bamberg (Germany) and wrote his PhD in political philosophy at the University of Marburg (Germany). In the past, he has worked on corporate responsibility in global supply chains and organised crime. His current research focuses on the mechanisms of (un)ethical decision-making organisations and the impact of storytelling on societal transformation processes.

RSA Fellow Benny Higgins began his career at Standard Life in 1983 where he joined as an actuarial student and went on to become a member of the Standard Life Group Executive Committee in 1996. In 1997 he moved to RBS to become Chief Executive of Retail Banking. He was with RBS until 2005. He became Chief Executive, Retail, HBOS in 2006 before joining Tesco Bank as Chief Executive in 2008, a position he held until February 2018. In September 2017 Benny was asked by the Scottish Government to develop an implementation plan for the creation of a Scottish National Investment Bank. Subsequently he was appointed as Strategic Adviser to the First Minister on the building of the Scottish national Investment Bank and Chairman of Scottish Government’s Advisory Group on Economic Recovery post COVID19. He chairs or is a board member of a number of other companies and organisations and has a strong interest in arts and culture. He graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Mathematics from the University of Glasgow and he was awarded a University Blue in 1983. He is an RSA Fellow, a Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He holds a number of Honorary Professorships.

RSA Fellow Tom Ward is a part time business director. He is a postgraduate tutor at Edinburgh University Business School, a philanthropist, and a musician. He is currently the chairman of Admiral Taverns Ltd, one of the UK’s largest pubs companies. He is also a member of the Equity Gap angel investor syndicate. He has a keen interest in public affairs and social issues.

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