The Failure of Risk Culture in Business Practices: Lessons from Julius Caesar’s Falls
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the fall of Julius Caesar as a historical case of risk culture failure. By reading betrayal, loss of legitimacy and resilience breakdown in organizational terms, the paper aims to draw lessons for contemporary governance, leadership, and organizational security. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study takes a qualitative, conceptual-historical approach, integrating risk governance, leadership studies and resilience theory with historiographies of Rome under Caesar. Following Power’s cultural critique and Beck’s risk society, the paper re-reads ancient events from organizational theory. Findings: The analysis identifies four dynamics of risk culture failure: pride and risk denial, breakdown of trust and betrayal, symbolic governance and loss of legitimacy, and resilience failure. These dynamics render how the erosion of trust, symbolic authority and lack of adaptive mechanisms turned Caesar’s authority into a significant threat to the system. Practical Implications: The study reveals three lessons for contemporary organizations: legitimacy is a critical element of organizational resilience; betrayal is a result of broken trust rather than unfaithful individuals and adaptive capacity is key to surviving a crisis. It is essential for leaders and organizations to demonstrate proportionality, inclusiveness, and accountability to avoid recreating the cultural failures of Rome. Originality/Value: The study bridges historical and modern perspectives demonstrating the universality of the dynamics of risk culture failure across time. It extends organizational risk theory by reading Caesar’s fall as an instance of systemic cultural fragility, providing a novel interpretative frame to analyse betrayal, leadership hubris, and resilience.