Toxic Cultures at Work

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003307334-1

In 2009, the British Parliament was rocked by an expenses scandal. Members of Parliament (MPs) had been claiming for such egregious items as pornographic films and cleaning a duck house. Unsurprisingly, the public were outraged. Some MPs went to prison for fraudulent claims, but the majority did not, as it was the norm to claim these expenses. It was part of the culture of entitlement. ‘I work hard with long hours’, one MP claimed and ‘I don’t have time to sort out my domestic expenses’ (1). How had such a culture occurred that was so at variance with most citizens’ view of what was reasonable?

In 2018, the Australian public were glued to their TVs each night as the daily proceedings of the Royal Commission ...