The Dark Pattern: Corporate Failure and Corporate Scandals

Call for Papers

The Dark Pattern: Corporate Failure and Corporate Scandals

JOURNAL NAME: Qualitative Research in Financial Markets

PUBLISHER: Emerald Publishing

SUBMISSION OPENS: 01 February 2026

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 31 December 2026

ABOUT THIS SPECIAL ISSUE

The phrase "dark pattern" has become increasingly prominent in today's business world to refer to the dishonest tactics used by companies to take advantage of clients, investors, and even staff members. Originally coined to describe intentional manipulation of user interfaces in digital design, it has come to refer to broader practices of corporate deception, unethical decision-making, and wilful disregard for accountability.

Guido Palazzo and Ulrich Hoffrage's (2025) notion of "The Dark Pattern" reframes scandals not as anomalies, but as predictable outcomes of systemic corporate designs that embed ethical failure into everyday business operations. Palazzo and Hoffrage propose nine "building blocks" of organisational misconduct:

1. Rigid ideology — A belief system that privileges some outcomes at the expense of others

2. Toxic leadership — Machiavellian or coercive influences within organisations

3. Manipulative/euphemistic language — Obscuring unethical actions behind benign terms

4. Corrupting goals — Unrealistic targets that pressure individuals to break rules

5. Destructive incentives — Excessive rewards for unethical results

6. Ambiguous rules — Enabling plausible deniability

7. Perceived unfairness — Rationalizing deviance as deserved

8. Dangerous group dynamics — Conformity and in-group bias

9. Slippery slope — Gradual escalation of wrongdoing

These factors interact and multiply to induce ethical fading — allowing "good people to do bad things." We see these dynamics played out in notorious corporate scandals: Enron's inflated accounting; Wells Fargo's fake accounts; Volkswagen's emissions fraud; and Theranos's data manipulation — all emerging not from individual villains but from systematic distortions of internal norms and incentives.

This special issue invites papers from a range of epistemological, theoretical, and methodological backgrounds, with a focus on qualitative analysis methodologies, to expand understanding of the connection between corporate scandals, corporate failure, and their origin in the dark pattern.

SCOPE & THEME AREAS

We invite submissions addressing (but not limited to) the following themes:

1. The Dark Pattern and digital interfaces — How dark patterns manifest in digital business environments and technology design.

2. The Dark Pattern and regulatory response — How regulators identify, respond to, and attempt to curb dark pattern practices.

3. Dark patterns and consumer trust — The impact of corporate dark patterns on consumer confidence and long-term brand relationships.

4. Financial misconduct and dark patterns — Connections between dark pattern behaviour and financial fraud, accounting manipulation, and market abuse.

5. Organisational culture — How internal cultures normalise unethical behaviour and enable systemic misconduct.

6. Crisis management — How organisations respond to and recover from scandals rooted in dark pattern behaviour.

7. Behavioural economics and decision-making — Cognitive and behavioural factors that enable or sustain dark pattern practices within organisations.

8. Media and public perception — How corporate scandals are framed, reported, and received in public discourse.

9. Consumer psychology — How dark patterns exploit cognitive biases and psychological vulnerabilities in consumers.

10. Societal impact — Broader economic, social, and community consequences of corporate failure driven by dark patterns.

11. Employee perspective — The lived experiences of workers within organisations exhibiting dark pattern behaviour.

12. Corporate governance — Governance failures that allow dark patterns to persist and the reforms needed to address them.

13. Ethical technology design — How design ethics can be embedded in technology and business systems to counter dark pattern tendencies.

GUEST EDITORS

Dr. Fakhrul Hasan Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK ✉️ fakhrul.hasan@northumbria.ac.uk

Prof. William Forbes School of Business, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK ✉️ wforbes001@dundee.ac.uk

Dr. Egor Kiselev School of Business, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK ✉️ ekiselev001@dundee.ac.uk

KEY DEADLINES & DATES

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

How to submit: Manuscripts must be submitted via ScholarOne Manuscripts, strictly following the journal's author guidelines.

Selecting the special issue: At the appropriate submission step, authors must select the special issue title from the drop-down menu in response to "Please select the issue you are submitting to."

Eligibility: Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication elsewhere while under review.

ServiceSetu Academics · Premier Platform for Academic Opportunities & Research Collaboration

Visit official website of the publisher