Risk and culture roundtable
Should the task of promoting a strong corporate culture be the purview of general counsel? We gathered a clutch of senior in-house specialists to debate the issue with Clifford Chance.
Matthew Scully, Clifford Chance: There are two things that I wanted to touch on: first, whether there is such a thing as a good culture – I would say there is no one good corporate culture for all businesses but there are perhaps some basic common features – and, second, the notion of ‘tone from the top’, which is very important but it is not enough because culture has to be embedded. Why are we discussing it around the table here as a bunch of lawyers? We can inject common sense and pragmatism into the debate and to help people understand that the difference between right and wrong is not just what is legal and not legal – sometimes there is something that is legal but is a really bad thing for the business to be doing.
Mark McAteer, The In-House Lawyer: Is there such a thing as a good corporate culture?
