Book Project
“DARK PATTERN”
The hidden dynamics of corporate scandals
Together with my colleague Ulrich Hoffrage I am currently finalizing a book on organizational scandals. Each of those scandal comes with thousands of pages of court documents, whistle blower reports, articles, and reports of investigative journalists. Sifting through all these documents and speaking with people involved in the scandals as victims, perpetrators or bystanders, we found a repeating pattern that explains moral failure in organizations.
For our book we analyze ten scandals in depth: Volkswagen, Boeing, Uber, Theranos, France Telecom, Wells Fargo, Abu Ghraib, Karolinska Hospital, Purdue and the doping scandal in professional cycling. We will show that there is always the same or at least a frighteningly overlapping pattern of nine elements to be found across all those seemingly very different cases.
If you have some insight knowledge in one of these scandals, that you are willing to share (even anonymously) please reach out to me. Email
If you are interested in buying the book, please subscribe to this mailing list and I will inform you when the book can be (pre)ordered. I will use your email address exclusively for keeping you informed about the book project.
For book related inquiries please contact my literary agent Connor Eck at The Eck Agency (connor@theeckagency.com).
DARK PATTERN will be published by Public Affairs (Hachette) in 2025.
Be informed about the progress of the book and be among the first to order it.
Feedback on how we analyze the different scandals
Doping at the Tour de France: “Excellent analysis”
former professional cyclist
Crash of the Boeing 737Max: “You have done a fabulous job. Better than any other account I’ve read. Great work.”
Boeing manager
Fraud at Wells Fargo: “Wow, what a chapter. I love your writing style by the way… its just so easy to follow and graphic, and you captured the frustration perfectly. A lot of my memories with the company resurfaced while reading your chapter on Wells. Despite it may sound as bizarre as it is to anyone else, I can assure you that the reality was no different.”
Former Wells Fargo manager
