A corporate culture or personality that encourages employees or agents to commit crimes.

• A. Corporate policy
• B. Reactive corporate fault
• C. Proactive corporate fault
• D. Corporate ethos

Answer: (D)

A company’s informal character—its ethos—is the set of shared values and norms that guide how people act, beyond what the written rules say. When that culture tolerates or even encourages illegal behavior, employees and agents feel it’s acceptable to commit crimes because wrongdoing is embedded in how business is run. This is different from a formal corporate policy, which are the written rules that try to regulate conduct, and from terms like reactive or proactive fault, which aren’t the way we describe culture. So the idea that best fits a culture that promotes crime is the corporate ethos.