Toxic Organizational Cultures and Leadership

2 The First Driver of Toxic Culture – The Normalization of Deviance

DOI: 10.4324/9781003330387-4

People are both carriers and creators of culture. Culture is enacted in everyday life. Culture reflects power and decision making through the organizational structure. Organizations can form their own norms – ‘the way things are done around here’. And these norms can oppose regulations, resist and misinterpret new information, or dismiss critical evidence. White-collar crime criminologists have for a long time recognized that corporate culture matters. One strand of criminological insight is that crime originates in distress, sometimes referred to as ‘strain’. This strain can result in people breaking rules or committing crimes as a way of coping ...