The last fortnight may have been the most damaging period ever for the reputation of large British businesses. GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical group, was fined $3bn for abusive practices in marketing drugs in the US. Royal Bank of Scotland and its subsidiaries failed to process their customers’ transactions. Both companies must have been relieved that Bob Diamond and Barclays successfully dominated the headlines. And these events follow BP’s disaster in 2010.
Conspiring to rig interest rates is probably fraudulent; failing to report the side effects of a drug is severely reprehensible but probably not illegal; cutting corners on an oil installation is negligent; systems failure in a computer system seems like bad luck. The degrees of culpability vary as do the incidents themselves. But is there a common underlying cause?
All four companies made decisions that benefited them in the short term but came back to haunt them. And yet to describe the problem as short-termism, though true, is not to get quite to the heart of the problem.