Volkswagen – Half-Hearted Apologies for Intentional Misbehavior
A standing joke we have with our doctor is to ask him who his doctor is. The assumption, of course, is that our doctor’s doctor just might be a wee bit smarter than our doctor. If you want to know who our doctor is, his name is Peter Sandman.
Perhaps the most astute and thoughtful risk communications consultant in the U.S. today, Peter has helped scores of government agencies and corporations prepare for and navigate their way through the dangerous of shoals.
Recently, Peter was asked about the Volkswagen scandal. With lessons for any organization that could face a crisis, here’s what he had to say:
What Volkswagen has to apologize for here isn’t a mere mistake. It is an intentional act of dishonesty.
Apologizing for mistakes is of course a lot easier than apologizing for evil, for intentional misbehavior. And it does absolutely no good to apologize for evil while claiming it was a mistake.
I don’t think anyone believes the company’s claim that a few mid-level engineers managed this fraud on their own. What would their motive be? I suppose it’s conceivable that some engineers pretended to have invented a huge improvement and got rewarded for doing so – and faked the improvement to get the reward. But it’s hard to imagine that no VW lawyer would have tried to patent the improvement … and thus discovered the fraud. And if individual employees loyally cheated on the regulation in order to benefit the company rather than themselves – which is also hard to imagine – the company would still be responsible for having created a corporate culture where a loyal employee could decide that that was a good thing to do.
If I’m right that nearly everyone believes top Volkswagen management knowingly participated in the fraud, and if that is actually what happened, then any “apology” that claims this isn’t so will fall flat. In fact, any “apology” that doesn’t explicitly acknowledge intentionality will fall flat. You can’t commit a crime on purpose, then apologize for an accident, and expect any sort of forgiveness.
To read the rest of Peter’s comments, please click here.