What Governance Means

 Governance Culture—in the context of the 2012 Barclays’ bank scandal over misreporting key interest rates…

“Culture is not a fluffy chimera of business how-to books or self-congratulatory corporate reports. Culture, real and unnoticed as the air we breathe, is the web of unspoken mutual understandings that frame what people expect from others and think is expected of them. This web shapes the fortunes of any organization or special group. Bob Diamond, Barclays’ disgraced ex-chief executive, knew this; he once declared “the evidence of culture is how people behave when no one is watching”. He was right, but did not act accordingly.”

Culture Shocks, Financial Times, July 2012