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I. Introduction
Like some other crises and scandals that periodically occur in the business community, the Volkswagen ("VW") scandal once again highlights the devastating consequences of corporatemisconduct, oncepublicly disclosed, and the media storm that generally follows the discovery of such significant misbehaviour by amajor corporation. Since the crisis broke in September 2015, the media have relayed endless details about the substantial negative impacts on VW, on various stakeholder groups such as employees, directors, investors, suppliers and consumers, and on the automobile industry as a whole.1 The multiple and negative repercussions at the economic, organizational and legal levels have quickly become apparent, in particular in the formof resignations, changes in VW's seniormanagement, layoffs, a hiring freeze, the end to the marketing of diesel-engined vehicles, vehicle recalls, a decline in car sales, a drop in market capitalization, and the launching of internal investigations by VW and external investigations by the public authorities. This comes in addition to the threat of numerous civil, administrative, penal and criminal lawsuits and the substantial penalties they entail, as well as the erosion of trust in VW and the automobile industry generally.2
A scandal of this extent cannot fail to raise a number of questions, in particular concerning the cause of the alleged cheating, liable actors, the potential organizational and regulatory problems related to compliance, and ways to prevent further misconduct at VW and within the automobile industry. Based on the information surrounding the VW scandal, it is premature to capture all facets of the case. In order to analyze inmore depththe various problems raised, we will have to wait for the findings of the investigations conducted both internally by the VW Group and externally by the regulatory authorities.
While recognizing the incompleteness of the informationmade available to date by VWand certain commentators, we can still use this documentation to highlight a few features of the case that deserve to be studied from the standpoint of corporate governance. This Article remains relatively modest in scope, and is designed to highlight certain organizational factors thatmay explain the deviant behaviour observed atVW.More specifically, it submits that the main cause of VW's alleged wrongdoing lies in the company's ambitious production targets for the U.S. market and the time and budget constraints imposed on employees to...